Written argumentative discourses were produced by 7 to 14 year-old children in two debate situations: one concerning a scientific issue (“Discours Formel”: DF,) and another concerning an opinion issue (“Discours Naturel”: DN). We had made the following developmental hypothesis: a specific discourse representation would be gradually built up by children in each situation, and would enable them to produce two different discourses, particularly with regard to the implication marks used by the writer. The two debate situations had been set up (...) to be only differentiated by the type of proposed issues. All the remaining situational characteristics had been made identical (social scenario, announced goal, addressee, etc.).Children's verbal products were divided into utterances. Each utterance was coded with regard to whether the following implication marks were present or not: the assuming by the writer of its assertive content; the writer's linguistically expressed reference to him- or herself; the evaluative or prescriptive value of the utterance; and the certainty modalities.The main results were: writer's assuming the assertive content specifies more and more DN, with a clear opposition between the two discourses realised by 13–14 children. While decreasing with age in both situations, the writer's self references are found to only occur in DN from 13–14. Prescriptive and evaluative types of utterance appear only in DN, at all the ages; the first ones decrease and the second ones increase from 7 to 14. At the opposite, DF proves to consist exclusively of constative utterances. At last, certainty modalities mainly occur in DN utterances. Differentiation between the two discourses has so begun by 7–8. But it becomes complete, for all the implication marks, at 13–14. The results observed at 13–14 join those shown by two reference adult groups, which performed the same discourse tasks.Finally, results are discussed with respect to parts of conceptions developed by Grize and by Bronckart. Given the many controls brought to bear in setting up the two discourse situations, children seem really to have been led, by the one representation of the argumentative issue, to produce more and more differentiated discourses. (shrink)

Religion and the external world -- Projection, religion, and the external world -- The senses, reason and the imagination -- Realism, meaning and justification : the external world and religious belief -- Modality, projection and realism -- 'Our profound ignorance' : causal realism, and the failure to detect necessity -- Spreading the mind : projection, necessity and realism -- Into the labyrinth : persons, modality, and Hume's undoing -- Value, projection, and realism -- Gilding : projection, value and secondary qualities (...) -- The gold : good, evil, belief and desire -- The golden : relational values, realism and a moral sense. (shrink)

Global metaphysical antirealism (or “antirealism”) is often thought to entail that the identity of each and every concrete entity in our world ultimately depends on us—on our adoption of certain social and linguistic conventions, for instance, or on our use of certain conceptual schemes. Drawing on the middle‐period works of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, I contend that metaphysical antirealism entails nothing of the sort. For Merleau‐Ponty, I argue, entities do not ultimately owe their identities to us, even though—as he puts it—their “articulations (...) are the very ones of our existence.” Once this is recognised, I maintain, certain interpretations of phenomenology are revealed to be caricatures and certain general objections to antirealism lose their force. (shrink)

It is the impression of neurologists who deal with cancer patients that the incidence of neurologic complications of cancer is increasing (Posner 1995). ...

Beliefs are freely attributed to God nowadays in Anglo–American philosophical theology. This practice undoubtedly reflects the twentieth–century popularity of the view that knowledge consists of true justified belief . The connection is frequently made explicit. If knowledge is true justified belief then whatever God knows He believes. It would seem that much recent talk of divine beliefs stems from Nelson Pike's widely discussed article, ‘Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action’. In this essay Pike develops a version of the classic argument for (...) the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will in terms of divine forebelief. He introduces this shift by premising that ‘ A knows X ’ entails ‘A believes X ’. As a result of all this, philosophers have increasingly been using the concept of belief in defining ‘omniscience’. (shrink)

Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK 3fS. received 28th August 1970, in final revised form 1st July 1971..

Geared toward readers already acquainted with special relativity, this book transcends the view of theory as a working tool to answer natural questions: What is ...

This article examines the origin of experiential organization, especially whether it is salient or selective. Aron Gurwitsch believes it is salient and William James that it is selective. I argue that Gurwitsch is right, and recount his argument and his critique of James, but I also pose my own critique and critical questions on the issue. -/- Gurwitsch's argument attempts to show that the organization of consciousness is not arbitrary or merely selected in some way by the subject. He claims (...) that when consciousness is organized it is found as already organized. -/- This is important for Gurwitsch's philosophical system because if he can establish that consciousness is always originally organized, then his famous claim that the theme, thematic-field, margin structure of consciousness is an invariant patterning impervious to the subject's whim, mood, or possible noetic training, is protected at the very start. (shrink)

Frente a una América Latina movilizada, conflictuada y atravesada por conatos de violencia interactoral, cívica-contestataria y política, y ante los abusos de gobiernos que resultan en reclamos y nuevas prácticas políticas de los sujetos sin derechos, se genera un escenario de riesgo para la endeble democracia. En virtud de esto el autor analiza la democracia no sólo en torno a los procesos y eventos electorales sino tambi{en abarcando otras aristas de este fenómeno, como la participación, las movilizaciones, los nuevos actores (...) y los comportamientos de las multitudes, buscando dar cuenta sobre los riesgos de la democracia. (shrink)