This book, first published in 1990, takes a critical look at the major assumptions which support critical thinking programs and discovers many unresolved questions which threaten their viability. John McPeck argues that some of these assumptions are incoherent or run counter to common sense, while others are unsupported by the available empirical evidence. This title will be of interest to students of the philosophy of education.

A critical study of McPeck's recent book, in which he strengthens and develops his arguments against teaching critical thinking (CT). Accepting McPeck's basic claim that there is no unitary skill of reasoning or thinking, I argue that his strictures on CT courses or programs do not follow. I set out what I consider the proper justification that programs in CT have to meet, and argue both that McPeck demands much more than is required, and also that it (...) is plausible that this deflated justification can be met. Specitically, I argue that it is reasonable to expect transfer of learning for basic logical skills. Additional topics covered include: the relation ofliberal education to critical thinking, argument analysis, testing for CT, and the value of conceptual or linguistic analysis. (shrink)

As a work of a scholarship it seems to me to compare favourably with the best books on the subject, including those by Marcus Singer and Onora Nell.' Prof.

In response to Charles Taylor's book "Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity," Becker defends the Western view of ethical conceptions based on our unique identity, reasoning, and historical heritage.

Examines Arthur Schopenhauer's (1788-1860) conception of human agency and responsibility, his unique ethics of the morally virtuous character, and his assessment of life as fundamentally suffering. This title focuses on his contention that the human will and the human body cannot have a cause and effect relationship with each other.

This book presents a detailed fieldwork-based study of the ancient Indian religion of Jainism. Drawing on field research in northern Gujarat and on the study of both ancient Sanskrit and Prakrit and modern vernacular Jain religious literature, John Cort provides a rounded portrait of the religion as it is practiced today.

A mutual relation between God and the world provides a crucial distinction between panentheism and both classical theism and pantheism. Several proposals responding to Analytical Theology's challenge to distinguish panentheism from other forms of theism are considered and found inadequate. After defining mutual relation, conceptual evidence and the frequency of descriptions of panentheism that affirm a mutual relation between God and the world provide evidence that a mutual relation is crucial to distinguishing panentheism. Finally, benefits of recognizing a mutual relation (...) between God and the world as crucial to panentheism are described. (shrink)

The distinctiveness of panentheism will facilitate its future development. Further, having a clear distinctive can facilitate conversations among panentheists from diverse religious traditions by helping recognize concepts that are compatible or similar to aspects of panentheism. Finally, having a clear distinctive facilitates recognizing relations between positions that are similar to panentheism and explicit forms of panentheism. An examination of three claims about the distinctiveness of panentheism suggests that a mutual relation between God and the world aids in identifying the distinctiveness (...) of panentheism. The nature of a mutual relation, evidence that a mutual relation is important to panentheism, and describing the benefits of recognizing a mutual relation support a mutual relation as distinctive of panentheism. (shrink)

The Division of Investigative Oversight within the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) is responsible for conducting oversight review of institutional inquiries and investigations of possible research misconduct. It is also responsible for determining whether Public Health Service findings of research misconduct are warranted. Although ORI findings rely primarily on the scope and quality of the institution’s analyses and determinations, ORI often has been able to strengthen the original findings by employing a variety of analytical methods, often computer based. Although (...) ORI does not conduct inquiries or investigations, it has broad authority to provide assistance to institutions at all stages of their reviews of allegations. This assistance can range from providing advice on best practices, to legal assistance, to suggestions for how best to investigate specific allegations. When asked, ORI can also conduct certain forensic analyses, such as a statistical examination of questioned digits or a simple examination of a questioned figure in Photoshop. ORI will not provide opinions or render judgment on such analyses while the institution is still conducting its investigation. Such analyses can be done without knowing much else about the case. (shrink)

This article explores the rhetoric, and mass mediation, of the national Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration ceremony, as broadcast on British television. I argue that the televised national ceremonies should be approached as an example of multi-genre epideictic rhetoric, working up meanings through a hybrid combination of genres, author/animators and modes. Epideictic rhetoric has often been depreciated as simply ceremonial ‘praise or blame’ speeches. However, given that the topics of praise/blame assume the existence of social norms, epideictic also acts to presuppose (...) and evoke common values, in general, and a collective recognition of shared social responsibilities, in particular. My methodology draws on the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, given, first, its central prominence in analysing argumentative strategies in discourse and, second, the ways it facilitates a reflexive ‘shuttling’ between text-discursive features, intertextual relations and wider contexts of society and history. Here, I examine how a catastrophic past is invoked in speech and evoked through image and music, in response to the demands that uncertainty of the future ‘places upon one’s conscience’. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a need to move yet further than has already been suggested by some from the individual to the collective as a base for public health. A communitarian approach is one way to achieve this. This has the advantage of allowing not only the community’s voice to have a say in setting the values for public health but also more formally the development of a constitution on which public health might then be built. It also (...) sees public health as a social institution which can be valued in its own right. (shrink)

The two best known objections to Kant's first defense of the duty of beneficence are examined and found to be fallacious. The first objection relies on the possibility of imagining an individual who would be willing for the maxim of nonbeneficence to be a universal law (but it fails to recognize that such an individual is not a rational person and thus not subject to morality at all); and the second objection, while granting the nonuniversalizability of the maxim of nonbeneficence, (...) puts forth the maxim of “occasional” benefit in place of the maxim of beneficence as an alternative to the maxim of nonbeneficence (but it fails to recognize that the maxim of “occasional” benefit is disqualified by Kant's first moral principle). (shrink)