Violence in sports is under intense public scrutiny. One hotly disputed issue concerns the acceptability of violent retaliation in sports, particular in the form of fighting in the National Hockey League. The question posed here is: Can fighting in the NHL be virtuous? Some think not, maintaining that fighting is undisciplined and ostensibly at odds with the virtues of good temper and justice. Contrary to this conclusion, this paper presents arguments that support the view that fighting in the NHL can (...) be virtuous and clearly and consistently action guiding if certain conditions are met. These conditions require that fighting as a practice helps to provide an education in the virtues, is reasonably safe, is good for the community of participants, and is part of a morally sensitive and progressive tradition and organizational structure. Yet in the end, while fighting in the NHL can be morally justified, recognizing and instilling the virtues of a good fight would require some rather significant formal.. (shrink)

The category of the admirable has received little attention in the history of philosophy, even among virtue ethicists. I don't think we can understand the admirable without investigating the emotion of admiration. I have argued that admiration is an emotion in which the object is ‘seen as admirable’, and which motivates us to emulate the admired person in the relevant respect. Our judgements of admirability can be distorted by the malfunction of our disposition to admiration. We all know many ways (...) in which admiration misfires when people admire someone who is not admirable. In this paper I focus on a different kind of mistake, one in which there is resistance to moving from admiring to emulating someone admirable. I think that Aristotle's zēlos is in between admiration and envy, and it points us to a predictable line of deviation from admiration to the path of envy, spite and ressentiment. I think these are mistakes to which people in the modern age are particularly prone. (shrink)

Plausible (eikotic) reasoning known from ancient Greek (late Academic) skeptical philosophy is shown to be a clear notion that can be analyzed by argumentation methods, and that is important for argumentation studies. It is shown how there is a continuous thread running from the Sophists to the skeptical philosopher Carneades, through remarks of Locke and Bentham on the subject, to recent research in artificial intelligence. Eleven characteristics of plausible reasoning are specified by analyzing key examples of it recognized as important (...) in ancient Greek skeptical philosophy using an artificial intelligence model called the Carneades Argumentation System (CAS). By applying CAS to ancient examples it is shown how plausible reasoning is especially useful for gaining a better understanding of evidential reasoning in law, and argued that it can also be applied to everyday argumentation. Our analysis of the snake and rope example of Carneades is also used to point out some ways CAS needs to be extended if it is to more fully model the views of this ancient philosopher on argumentation. (shrink)

What kind of affective phenomenon is religious zeal and how does it relate to other affective phenomena, such as moral anger, hatred, and love? In this paper, I argue that religious zeal can be both, and be presented and interpreted as both, a love-like passion and an anger-like emotion. As a passion, religious zeal consists of the loving devotion to a transcendent religious object or idea such as God. It is a relatively enduring attachment that is constitutive of who the (...) zealot is, and it expresses itself in a distinctive set of mental and behavioral dispositions. Most importantly, it motivates uncompromising actions and involves intense, hot, and deep emotions. As an anger-like emotion, religious zeal is an occurrent affective state of mind that is intentionally directed towards a specific object, characteristically a person or group of persons. It condemns the violation of a religious norm that is taken to be of absolute validity and general applicability. It motivates an action aiming at vengeance and retaliation, and it involves intense and hot feelings of hostility towards its object. I argue that rather than reducing the complex phenomenon of religious zeal to one of these two manifestations, we should reflect upon the question of how the two distinct conceptualizations relate to each other. (shrink)

Although cognitively oriented theories of emotion are now dominant in the psychological study of emotion, there remain issues upon which these theories do not agree. Central among these are questions regarding the minimal cognitive processes necessary to have an emotion. A potentially productive approach to such questions is the study of the relation of cognitive development and the development of emotions in infants. Such an approach was featured in ancient philosophical and psychological treatises, some of which formed the very foundations (...) of later cognitive theories. However, the recent literature has been nearly indifferent to just these foundations. Ancient commentators, especially Aristotle and the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, understood emotions as fundamentally sociomoral constructs. Owing to a lack of socialisation and moral understanding, infants are not fully capable of experiencing emotions as they are typically understood. Contemporary work in the area of emotion, including that of Michael Lewis, as well as work in other emotion-related areas, is shown to address only inadequately the sociomoral components of emotion and thus to address only inadequately the emotion-cognition relationship. (shrink)

The orthodox view of anger takes desires for revenge or retribution to be central to the emotion. In this paper, I develop an empirically informed challenge to the retributive view of anger. In so doing, I argue that a distinct desire is central to anger: a desire for recognition. Desires for recognition aim at the targets of anger acknowledging the wrong they have committed, as opposed to aiming for their suffering. In light of the centrality of this desire for recognition, (...) I argue that the retributive view of anger should be abandoned. I consider and dismiss two types of moves that can be made on the part of a proponent of the orthodox view in response to my argument. I propose that a pluralist view, which allows for both retribution and recognition in anger, is to be preferred. (shrink)

Carnes Lord is an eminent Aristotelian scholar who has since the mid-1970s intermittently occupied positions within the United States government. This article considers the linkages between his writings on Aristotle and the standpoints he has adopted when in government, with particular reference to the period in the early 1980s when he fulfilled an important role in developing a public diplomacy and information strategy against the Soviet Union. Attention is given to Lord’s interpretation and application, in both his writings and his (...) policy-making, of several key aspects of Aristotle’s political thought, such as rhetoric, regimes, and education. The influence of Leo Strauss on Lord’s thinking is also taken into account. (shrink)

Scholastic philosophers can be quite funny. What’s more, they have good reason to be: Aristotle himself lists ready wit (eutrapelia) among the virtues, as a mean between excessive humor and its defect. Here, I assess Scholastic discussions of humor in theory, before turning to examples of it in practice. The last and finest of these is a joke, hitherto unacknowledged, which Aquinas makes in his famous Five Ways. Along the way, we’ll see (i) that the history of philosophy is not (...) so hostile to humor as is commonly supposed; and (ii) that the competing theories of humor like the Incongruity Theory and the Release Theory are not altogether incompatible. We’ll also see at least one example of an apparent attempt by modern translators to excise humor from a medieval text. Our considerations will open a window into what oral discussion and debate at medieval universities was actually like, and how we should understand the relationship between the texts we have now and the exchanges that actually occurred then. (shrink)

Scientific progress has been understood as synonymous with the growth of knowledge and the advancement of humanity. In this brief survey, this concept is problematized both in rhetorical terms and within the neoliberal framework. Despite the sustained marketing of the scientific community and its funding agencies, the dangers associated with progress are explained and highlighted.

Is a neo-Platonic theory of moral education better than a neo-Aristotelian one, because the former offers a dialogue method that teachers can use in universities to induce epiphanies in students, in order to jump-start the moral development of those with a rather vicious character? In this paper, this claim, put forward by Jonas and Nakazawa in their book A Platonic Theory of Moral Education, is evaluated. Admittedly, the Nicomachean Ethics, which came to us in the form of a collection of (...) edited lecture notes, gives the impression that Aristotle was not interested in dialogue. But by looking at the dialogical form of the Ethics and by consulting some of his ideas on logic, I show that Aristotle’s oeuvre does include valuable ideas about how teachers may conduct dialogues with their students. These dialogues may not yield epiphanies and will not convert vicious adults, but they are suitable for reaching most students and can appeal to their emotions and practical wisdom. While Jonas and Nakazawa argue that Plato and Aristotle only agree on the centrality of habituation, imitation, and role-modelling in their accounts of moral education, I conclude that dialogue should be added to that list. (shrink)

Probing the vague boundaries and constraints commonly placed on humor, this exploratory essay considers the responsibilities and duties that can guide political humor. Working within a deontological paradigm, the essay establishes the relevance of ethics within society's political humor and considers the importance of ethical political humor. Moreover, this study points to Christians and Nordenstreng's model of global social responsibility theory as providing a parsimonious and flexible framework for orienting ethical political humor.

Friedman misunderstands postmodernism?or, as it could better be called, metamodernism. Metamodernism is the common sense beyond the lunatic formulas of the Vienna Circle and conventional statistics. It has little to do with the anxieties of Continental intellectuals. It therefore is necessary for serious empirical work on the role of the state.

This article addresses the problem of expertise in a democratic political system: the tension between the authority of expertise and the democratic values that guide political life. We argue that for certain problems, expertise needs to be understood as a dialogical process, and we conceptualize an understanding of expertise through and as argument that positions expertise as constituted by and a function of democratic values and practices, rather than in the possession of, acquisition of, or relationship to epistemic materials. Conceptualizing (...) expertise through argument leads us to see expertise as a kind of phronetic practice, oriented toward judgments and problems, characterized by its ability to provide inventional capacities for selecting the best possible resolution of a particular problem vis-à-vis particular expectations regarding the resolution of a problem. At its core, expertise thus comes to exist in reference not to epistemic but to dialogical, deliberative, democratic practice. (shrink)

Linguists have often remarked upon the polysemous nature of love, whereby the term encompasses a wide diversity of emotional relationships. Several typologies have been constructed to account for this diversity. However, these tend to be restricted in scope, and fail to fully represent the range of experiences signified by the term ‘love’ in discourse. In the interest of generating an expanded typology of love, encompassing its varied forms, an enquiry was conducted into relevant concepts found across the world's cultures, focusing (...) on so-called untranslatable words. Through a quasi-systematic search of published and internet sources, 609 relevant words were identified. These were organised through a version of grounded theory into 14 categories, representing 14 different forms or ‘flavours’ of love. The result is an expanded theoretical treatment of love, allowing us to better appreciate the nuances of this most cherished and yet polysemous of concepts. (shrink)

There are many reasons to worry about shame in moral development. Shame can be employed for bad ends, such as manipulation and making others feel powerless. Shame is often associated with denial and hiding behaviors, social phobia, and anxiety. It is also not a motivation suitable for performing virtuous actions. This article argues that, nevertheless, well-ordered shame plays an indispensable and constructive role, as part of a mixed-methods approach in the development of moral character. This article assesses various reasons why (...) shame has fallen out of favor among Western moral educators and demonstrates why each of these reasons falls short of providing a compelling case against employing shame. It defends shame on epistemic and virtue developmental grounds. Moreover, it proposes ways to employ shame in character education, while mitigating potential damages and avoiding the concerns raised by social scientists. (shrink)

The central idea of the paper is that human thinking consists in a movement through which a person socially interacts with herself. Consequently, thinking does not offer the experience of a private refuge in the intimacy of the individual thinker's self-knowing, but a field where multiple points of view interact by contesting, distancing, approaching, agreeing or disagreeing, one to another. Classical (Isocrates, 1929/1968) and contemporary (Billig, 1987) rhetorical approaches to thinking stress that both “inner” and “social” discourse are addressed to (...) someone else, are determined by the anticipation of this audience, and both are interested in persuading it. In doing so, the discursive, rhetoric, and dialogic aspects of thinking become tied to argumentation. The paper tries to show, following the dialogical notion of discourse of Bakhtin (1986) and Vološinov (1929/1986) that, since every act of thinking consists in the raising of a point of view addressing another one and oriented by a particular interest, every stream of thought involves a rhetorical activity. A distinction between rhetoric and argumentation is proposed. On this basis, the rhetorical nature of thinking is discussed beyond argumentative discourse. Overall, this discussion contributes to a rhetorical approach to dialogism. (shrink)

Deprivation offers a plausible explanation for the badness of death, so fear is not unreasonable. But horror at the prospect of one's death is not just extreme fear because horror is structurally different than fear. Horror requires a different explanation. For Sartre, horror is possible only in unique circumstances. I argue that Sartre's view, when combined with the subjective incomprehensibility of one's annihilation, can explain horror and other negative emotions that are not contingent on deprivation. Further, I argue that while (...) fear can be reasonable if one's death will deprive, Lucretius's Symmetry Argument shows that horror is unreasonable. (shrink)

Iran's nuclear program has garnered a great deal of media attention for nearly a decade, yet critical discourse scholars have been relatively silent on the matter. To spur more scholarship on the nuclear controversy, this study examines the language of nine interviews with former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Analyzing the opening questions of topic shifts, the relationship of scope and topic, and Secretary Rice's portrayal of the US and Iran, I argue that Rice used her media access as (...) a platform to encourage audiences to see Iran's nuclear program as a nuclear weapons program, often with the complicity of her interviewers and always without evidence. In the wake of the unilateralist American invasion of Iraq, Secretary Rice also worked to rebuild a positive image of the White House as she presented the US as a proponent of multilateral diplomacy as opposed to her portrayal of the Islamic Republic as a rogue state. (shrink)

The allocation of healthcare resources takes place at two distinct levels. At the macroeconomic level, policymakers decide on budgets, staffing, cost‐effectiveness thresholds, clinical guidelines and insurance payments; at the microeconomic level, healthcare professionals decide on whom to treat, what the appropriate treatment is, how much time and effort should each patient receive and how urgent the need for care is. At both levels, there is a constant social need for just allocation. Policymakers are mostly guided by abstract principles of justice, (...) thinking in terms of groups of patients, epidemiological data, impersonal statistics and economic costs. On the other hand, healthcare professionals understand the need for justice at a more personal level, as they interact with patients and, in a sense, put theory into practice. Nurses hold a unique position in healthcare systems, as, traditionally, they are closer to patients than other health professionals. This means that they have a firsthand view of the effect that their decisions have on specific patients and, therefore, nurses tend to get more influenced by their personal feelings, values and beliefs at the microeconomic level. This presentation shall examine the gap between abstract macroeconomic and concrete microeconomic health resources allocation decisions, with a particular emphasis on the role of the nurse. (shrink)

Damascius has become well-known in recent scholarship for his unique, radical use of the aporetic method, both to highlight the inherent limits of human thought and to reveal crucial tensions in Neoplatonic metaphysics. Though much attention has been paid to the subjective or skeptical aspects of Damascius’ aporiai, little has been noted of the parallels between Damascius’ aporetic strategy in the De Principiis and Aristotle’s own in Metaphysics B. This article analyzes the parallel by looking at Aristotle’s aim for aporiai (...) in Metaphysics B.1 and closely comparing, as a case study, the De Principiis’ first aporia alongside Metaphysics B’s first aporia. Despite Damascius’ aporia dealing with different principles compared to Aristotle’s, the aporetic method for both ultimately exposes the limitations of thought and, exactly in the domain of these limitations, clarifies our concepts in relating to reality and attaining determinate understanding of principles. (shrink)

Edward R. Murrow's reputation began and grew with World War II. This analysis, focused on his radio reporting, concerns two reports filed after he accompanied a bombing mission over Germany. The two reports provide a unique analytic opportunity because their foundation is in a singular experience. It is an analysis of the decision process, with ethical questions central to the development of the story, it is an application of classical ethical theory to a historical object for the purposes of creating (...) an understanding of media heritage and the application of moral philosophy. (shrink)

Our aim was to employ a critical analytic lens to explicate the role of nursing research in supporting the notion of caring realities. To do this, we used case exemplars to illustrate the infusion of such discourses. The first exemplar examines the fundamental concept of caring: using Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing, the case study surfaces caring as originally grounded in ritualized practice and subsequently describes its transmutation, via competing discourses, to a more holistic concept. It is argued that in (...) the many and varied attempts to define the dynamic concept of care, caring has now become paradoxically, a more fragmented concept despite attempts to render it more holistic and inclusive. In the second exemplar, one of the authors draws on her personal experience of the gap between theory and practice, so pronounced that it pushed the author to revisit the concept of evidence‐based practice and nursing education. In our third and final exemplar, we refer to the absence of knowledge and practice generated through natural enquiry and curiosity, an absence which has led to production of corporate led rhetoric. Drawing together the central arguments of the three exemplars, we reflect on the influential role of nursing research in enabling the deconstruction of taken for granted assumptions such as caring, evidence‐based practice and empowerment; assumptions which have been generated by discourses riddled with confusion and alienation from the reality of practice and the natural spirit of professional enquiry. (shrink)

Departing from Levinas, this paper will address the significance of shame in contemporary discourse in order to approach what could be called its ethical intrigue. Focusing on its political, social and phenomenological implications, I intend to reconsider the experience of shame as it has been appropriated within the politics of affect and account for its relation to ethics, which alone can reveal its transformative possibilities. Shame will emerge as an affect of proximity whose basic structure of being exposed is an (...) attestation of our constitutive openness to others that towers above the politics of interest and the structures of economy that advance the drama of the Ego. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultations are sometimes deemed complete at the moment when the consultants make a recommendation. In CECs that involve actual ethical conflict, this view of a consult's endpoint runs the risk of overemphasizing the conflict's resolution at the expense of the consult's process, which can have deleterious effects on the various parties in the conflict. This overly narrow focus on reaching a decision or recommendation in consults that involve profound moral disagreement can result in two types of adverse, lingering (...) sequelae: moral distress or negative moral emotions. The problem, succinctly named, is that such consults have insufficient “closure” for patients, families, and providers. To promote closure, and avoid the ills of moral distress and the moral emotions, I argue that CECs need to prioritize assisted conversation between the different stakeholders in these conflicts, what is often referred to as “bioethics mediation.”. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultations are sometimes deemed complete at the moment when the consultants make a recommendation. In CECs that involve actual ethical conflict, this view of a consult's endpoint runs the risk of overemphasizing the conflict's resolution at the expense of the consult's process, which can have deleterious effects on the various parties in the conflict. This overly narrow focus on reaching a decision or recommendation in consults that involve profound moral disagreement can result in two types of adverse, lingering (...) sequelae: moral distress or negative moral emotions. The problem, succinctly named, is that such consults have insufficient “closure” for patients, families, and providers. To promote closure, and avoid the ills of moral distress and the moral emotions, I argue that CECs need to prioritize assisted conversation between the different stakeholders in these conflicts, what is often referred to as “bioethics mediation.”. (shrink)

The paper asserts that the post-modern rejection of “modern” theoretical accounts including ethical-theoretical accounts as unacceptable meta-narratives would concur with an Aristotelian critique of contemporary ethical theories. Hence and Aristotelian critique will be similar to a post-modern critique. The paper sketches an account of what post-modernism in philosophy is and shows its similarity to Aristoteleanism in rejecting “modern” approaches in a significant way since an Aristotelian approach uses different criteria for what counts as ethical knowledge. The paper suggests that if (...) one follows the lead of Aristotle outlined in Book One Chapter Three of the Nichomachean Ethics applied ethics can be seen as similar to what Aristotle called “Rhetoric,” for in the Rhetoric Aristotle shows how one should engage in discourse about issues of the just and the good. The final section addresses the problem of how an Aristotelian approach can avoid the relativism of post-modernism. (shrink)

This paper discusses the definition of argumentation as a means for persuading an audience on the acceptability of a thesis. It is argued that persuasion is a goal that relates more to the communicative situation, the type of interaction or the type of discourse, rather than to the argumentative nature of it. Departing from the analysis of a short conversational sequence between people who agree on an issue and nevertheless argue, I suggest that a definition of argumentation in terms of (...) persuasion fails to account for what people are actually doing in these situations. I propose instead that several functions may be assigned to argumentation when considering the context in which it is produced: a cognitive function (which helps participants to elaborate a position on the discussed issue), and an identifying function (which enables them to portray themselves through the expression and the justification of their opinion). In the case analyzed here, a third function to which the argumentative activity contributes can also be identified, namely the enhancing of the emotional tonality of the relationship between the participants. While it becomes clear from the discussion of this argumentative sequence that the participants do not seek to persuade each other or some third party, it is not suggested that argumentation never aims at persuading an audience, but rather that persuasion cannot be considered as a defining feature of argumentation. (shrink)

Many outside science and engineering, especially social scientists and “rhetoricians”, claim that rhetoric, “the art of persuasion”, is an important part of technical communication. This claim is either trivial or false. If “persuasion” simply means “effective communication”, then, of course, rhetoric is an important part of technical communication. But, if “persuasion” has anything like its traditional meaning (a specific art of winning conviction), rhetoric is not an important part of technical communication; indeed, its use in technical communication would be unethical. (...) [By] an advocate is meant one whose business it is to smooth over real difficulties, and to persuade where he cannot convince. (shrink)

This article re-examines current definitions of populism, which portray it as either a powerful corrective to or the nemesis of liberal democracy. It does so by exploring a crucial but often neglected dimension of populism: its redemptive character. Populism is here understood to function according to the logic of resentment, which involves both socio-political indignation at injustice and envy or ressentiment. Populism promises redemption through regaining possession: of a lower status, a wounded identity, a diminished or lost control. Highly moralized (...) images of the past – historical or archetypal – are mobilized by populist leaders to castigate the present and accelerate the urgency of change in it. The argument is illustrated with Caesar’s Column, a futuristic novel written by the Minnesota populist leader Ignatius Donnelly. The complex and ambivalent structure of this dystopian novel – a textual source for the Populist Party manifesto in the 1890s, which stands in contrast with agrarian populism as everyday utopia – enables us to move beyond the polarized positions dominating the current debate. Reading Caesar’s Column ultimately shows that populism can be both a corrective and a danger to democracy, but not for the reasons usually stated in the literature. (shrink)

According to Perelman (Rhétoriques, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1989: 80), a pseudo-argument is an argument that is supposed to be convincing from a given audience viewpoint, while it is not from another audience viewpoint. Such a claim raises the traditional problem of the boundaries between the well known “convince versus persuade” dichotomy. This paper aims at investigating it from a contemporary rhetorical and argumentative perspective which will take into account the fictional dimension of persuasion. In this perspective, it will be (...) claimed that the notion of an “as if” argument better fits to some rhetorical phenomena. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper deals with the discursive construction of in-groups and out-groups through a politics of fear and a politics of hope. It draws on the 2015 Greek election and referendum campaigns of the two main political parties – the radical left Syriza and the conservative New Democracy – and emphasises how they legitimised their political decisions via these two forms of politics. The Greek bailout referendum took place on 5 July 2015 in a climate of polarisation and insecurity. We assume (...) that the referendum, at the campaign level, could be considered an extension of the January 2015 election campaign that was shaped on the basis of a synthesis of a politics of fear and a politics of hope. Using the discursive strategies of the Discourse Historical Approach, and especially argumentation strategies and the concepts of topos and recontextualisation, we illustrate the link between political communication, election campaign strategies and political discourse through the prisms of fear and hope. Drawing on the Spinoza ‘affects’, we intend to conduct an interdisciplinary study of the contemporary Greek political scene and to illustrate whether and how political rhetoric and communication strategies are conducive to political dichotomies. (shrink)

In the operating theater, the micro-politics of practice, such as interpersonal communications, are central to patient safety and are intimately tied with values as well as knowledge and skills. Team communication is a shared and distributed work activity. In an era of "professionalism," that must now encompass "interprofessionalism," a virtue ethics framework is often invoked to inform practice choices, with reference to phronesis or practical wisdom. However, such a framework is typically cast in individualistic terms as a character trait, rather (...) than in terms of a distributed quality that may be constituted through intentionally collaborative practice, or is an emerging property of a complex, adaptive system. A virtue ethics approach is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a collaborative bioethics within the operating theater. There is also an ecological imperative - the patient's entry into the household (oikos) of the operating theater invokes the need for "hospitality" as a form of ethical practice. (shrink)

This article defends deliberative democracy against the problem of tacit knowledge. It has been argued that deliberative democracy gives a privileged position to linguistic communication and therefore excludes tacit forms of knowledge which cannot be expressed propositionally. This article shows how the exclusion of such knowledge presents important challenges to both proceduralist and epistemic conceptions of deliberative democracy, and how it has been taken by some to favour markets over democratic institutions. After pointing to the limitations of market alternatives, deliberative (...) democracy is defended by arguing that tacit knowledge can be brought into deliberation through the mechanism of trust in testimony. By trusting the testimony of a speaker, deliberators are able to act on knowledge even without it being explicitly expressed. The article then goes on to discuss the implications of this defence for deliberative theory, and particularly, the forms of reason which deliberative democrats must see as legitimate. (shrink)

This article is an appreciative essay review of Andrew Feenberg's Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (2005).

Titian's Rape of Europa is highly praised for its luminous colors and sensual textures. But the painting has an overlooked dark side, namely that it eroticizes rape. I argue that this is an ethical defect that diminishes the painting aesthetically. This argument-that an artwork can be worse off qua work of art precisely because it is somehow ethically problematic-demonstrates that feminist concerns about art can play a legitimate role in art criticism and aesthetic appreciation.

Wiredu’s call for democracy by consensus is illustrated by his description of traditional African consensual rationality. This description contains the attribution of immanence to African consensual rationality. This paper objects to this doctrine of immanence. More importantly, the doctrine of immanence has led to the attribution of pure rationality to traditional African consensual practices. With reference to Aristotle’s three components of persuasion, I object to deliberation as purely rational and impervious to extraneous factors. I further argue that it is because (...) deliberation is not always perfectly rational that the process of consensus can suffer three forms of social conformity: conformity to dominant players, to numerical opinion majority, and to group-centrism. These forms of conformity mean that a consensus task order could lead to decisions of more inclusive value, but not necessarily decisions of more epistemic value. The concept of agonistic inquiry is employed to tackle what I see as the dangers of conformity and complacency in the project of inclusivity, and this is to strike a crucial balance between too-consensual and purely adversarial forms of deliberation. (shrink)

The consensus is that novels can be fully appreciated only through an experiential engagement with their well-formed instances. But what are the entities that serve as such instances? According to the orthodox view, these entities are primarily inscriptions—concrete texts written or printed on something or displayed on the screen of some electronic device. In this paper, I argue that this view is misguided, since well-formed instances of a novel must manifest certain sonic properties, but such properties cannot be manifested by (...) inscriptions. As an alternative, I put forward the view that the entities that serve as well-formed instances of novels are readings and sums of readings and graphic elements. (shrink)

Most applications of cost-benefit analysis in environmental policy, and almost all the controversial cases, involve the use of contingent valuation (CV) surveys. There is now a relatively well-developed critique of CV as a method of public consultation on environmental issues. Theories of deliberative democracy have been invoked which question the individualistic, preference-based calculus of CV. A particular deliberative institution which has recently received much attention is the citizens' jury (CJ). While CJs and other deliberative institutions have come to be regarded (...) as alternatives to CV, it is far from obvious in what sense this is true. The discussion begins by exploring the extent to which CV and CJ can be meaningfully compared. After specifying a limited sense in which this is possible, the paper goes on to assess the virtues of deliberation by reference to this comparison. Much of the assessment is made from the perspective of rational choice theory, because that approach has been influential amongst critics of deliberative democracy. The main aim is to develop an argument for the merits of deliberation, in terms which its critics must acknowledge. (shrink)