In this paper we discuss three different kinds of disagreement that have been, or could reasonably be, characterized as deep disagreements. Principle level disagreements are disagreements over the truth of epistemic principles. Sub-principle level deep disagreements are disagreements over how to assign content to schematic norms. Finally, framework-level disagreements are holistic disagreements over meaning not truth, that is over how to understand networks of epistemic concepts and the beliefs those concepts compose. Within the context of each of these kinds of (...) disagreement it is not possible for the parties to the dispute to rationally persuade one another through only offering epistemic reasons for their conflicting points of view. However, in spite of the inability to rationally persuade, we explore how it may nevertheless be possible to rationally navigate each of these varieties of deep disagreement. (shrink)

In recent discussions concerning the definition of argument, it has been maintained that the word ‘argument’ exhibits the process-product ambiguity, or an act/object ambigu-ity. Drawing on literature on lexical ambiguity we argue that ‘argument’ is not ambiguous. The term ‘argu-ment’ refers to an object, not to a speech act. We also examine some of the important implications of our argument by considering the question: what sort of abstract objects are arguments?

Work on analogy has been done from a number of disciplinary perspectives throughout the history of Western thought. This work is a multidisciplinary guide to theorizing about analogy. It contains 1,406 references, primarily to journal articles and monographs, and primarily to English language material. classical through to contemporary sources are included. The work is classified into eight different sections (with a number of subsections). A brief introduction to each section is provided. Keywords and key expressions of importance to research on (...) analogy are discussed in the introductory material. Electronic resources for conducting research on analogy are listed as well. (shrink)

Crime scene investigation is a form of Distributed Cognition. The principal concept we explore in this paper is that of `resource for action'. It is proposed that crime scene investigation employs four primary resources-for-action: the environment, or scene itself, which affords particular forms of search and object retrieval; the retrieved objects, which afford translation into evidence; the procedures that guide investigation, which both constrain the search activity and also provide opportunity for additional activity; the narratives that different agents within the (...) system produce to develop explanatory models and formal accounts of the crime. For each aspect of distributed cognition, we consider developments in technology that could support activity. (shrink)

Crime scene investigation is a form of Distributed Cognition. The principal concept we explore in this paper is that of `resource for action'. It is proposed that crime scene investigation employs four primary resources-for-action: the environment, or scene itself, which affords particular forms of search and object retrieval; the retrieved objects, which afford translation into evidence; the procedures that guide investigation, which both constrain the search activity and also provide opportunity for additional activity; the narratives that different agents within the (...) system produce to develop explanatory models and formal accounts of the crime. For each aspect of distributed cognition, we consider developments in technology that could support activity. (shrink)

A critical survey of arguments for and against the morality and the legality of recreational drug use, deploying Feinberg's analysis of liberty-limiting principles.

An egalitarian interpretation and defence of Rawls's principles of justice and their institutional and policy implications in response to G. A. Cohen's criticisms of Rawls's alleged justification of unequalizing incentives. Keywords Applied Philosophy Social and Political Philosophy Rawls G.A. Cohen difference priciple incentives justice property-owning democracy.

An egalitarian interpretation and defence of Rawls's principles of justice and their institutional and policy implications in response to G. A. Cohen's criticisms of Rawls's alleged justification of unequalizing incentives.

The first substantial attempt to produce a dialogue between feminists and their male allies, this collection of essays assesses the benefits or disadvantages of male participation in feminism. This edition first published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This text provides a comprehensive examination of key concepts and theories in moral and political philosophy. With a clear focus on the essentials of each topic, Smith presupposes no prior knowledge and relates moral philosophy to social and political issues.

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently developed accounts of relative truth. Given that logical consequence is often characterized in terms of truth preservation, notions of truth are often associated with corresponding notions of logical consequence. Accordingly, in his Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and Its Applications, John MacFarlane provides two different definitions of logical consequence that incorapte assessment context-sensitive truth. One motivation for adopting an assessment context-sensitive account of truth for judgements about taste is to explain how conflicting taste claims can be true (...) relative to different contexts of assessment. However, in the midst of dialogues in which conflicting taste claims are made, it is also possible for the participants in the dialogue to make conflicting claims about what inferences are and are not logically valid. This paper accomplishes two objectives. First, I argue that MacFarlane’s notions of logical consequence do not adequately account for important features of some dialogues in which conflicting logical claims are made. In particular, I argue that MacFarlane’s accounts of logical consequence do not explain how logical claims made about inferences in taste-discourse could be assessment context-sensitive. Second, I propose a consequence relation that can be incorporated into an assessment context-sensitive account of logical claims made about inferences in taste discourse. (shrink)

Garrod, Smith and the contributors of the volume envisage the longue durée poetics of an early modern genre. They interpret its poetics alongside its various epistemic agenda and make a case for the literary status of natural history.

The relation between moral philosophy and moral practice is itself philosophically controversial. nor is there any one determinate formula through which to express the relations between the basic principles of morality and of rationality itself. the concepts of the moral and the political are both 'essentially contestable' and so too is the nature of their relations; that is, their analysis is itself of moral and political import. nevertheless, in periods of overall stability, this contestability may hardly be apparent. all this, (...) and its connection with philosophy's fundamental commitment to questioning and self-awareness has a deep significance for moral (and political) education. (shrink)

The Companion provides an accessible critical survey of Western visual art theory from sources in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance thought through to contemporary writings.

This book provides an integral exploration of God, Jesus, and the Bible that provides a new unifying framework for Christian consciousness in our contemporary world. The bigger, closer, and more human God of Jesus hidden behind the traditional Trinity is God-beyond-us, God-beside-us, and God-being-us: divine consciousness in all its modes.

Many artists and scientists - including Buffon, Goethe, and Philipp Otto Runge - who observed the vividly coloured shadows that appear outdoors around dawn and dusk, or indoors when a candle burns under waning daylight, chose to describe their colours as 'beautiful'. Paul Smith explains what makes these ephemeral effects worthy of such appreciation - or how depictions of coloured shadows have genuine aesthetic and epistemological significance. This multidisciplinary book synthesises methodologies drawn from art history, psychology and neuroscience, history of (...) science, and philosophy. This title will be of interest to scholars in art history, art theory, and the history of science and technology. (shrink)

Georges Seurat, one of the most popular and admired of post-Impressionist painters, has been the focus of much attention in recent years. This book by Paul Smith views the artist in a new context and explodes some of the myths that have grown up about him. Challenging the assumption that Seurat's work was scientific or that it expressed a serious commitment to anarchism, Smith instead traces the painters involvement with the various factions of the avant-garde and shows that he was (...) perhaps the earliest exponent of Idealism in modern art. Smith studies contemporary interpretations of Impressionism and analyzes how the groups surrounding Seurat constructed meaning from his art. From this investigation he creates a portrait of Seurat as one who was willing to accept, even encourage, interpretations of his art that he may not have intended. Smith shows, for example, that the "scientific" account of Seurat's color first developed by Félix Fénéon actually represents the theory and practice of Pissaro. He examines Seurat's involvement with anarchist critics and concludes that he merely posed as a painter with left-wing sympathies in order to benefit from the publicity these writers gave him. He explains that Seurat was sympathetic to Symbolism from its very inception and that he and his early Symbolist critics developed a theory of his art that was founded on Schopenhauer and Wagner's ideas on art. And he explores the ways that Seurat focused on the musicality of art and on incorporating certain "musical" features in his work. Beautifully illustrated and engagingly written, this book presents a convincing new interpretation of the work of a major artist. (shrink)

This book candidly reports the experiences of one middle school principal for 160 consecutive days with little or no editing. The material is much more than the typical case study. The events are presented in context; the results of actions taken are seen in the daily lives of all affected.

Drawing on the classical concept of rhetorical _dispositio_, this study gives new interpretations of a number of literary texts of the French Renaissance. The often problematic ordering of these texts is studied from a variety of perspectives, historical, theoretical and cultural.

_ Source: _Volume 35, Issue 1, pp 35 - 60 The early-modern French translations of Erasmus’ Praise of Folly show an astonishing adaptability to its ever changing readerships. Much attention has been paid recently to the two sixteenth-century translations and their intended readers—royal and bourgeois respectively. The three French translations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are less known but all the more intriguing. In 1642 Folly addresses herself to the French pre-classicist readers, adepts of Richelieu’s new Académie Française—although her (...) translator, Hélie Poirier, was a Protestant refugee, recently settled in the Netherlands. In 1671 Folly seeks her readers in the Parisian salons, satirizing the same societal wrongs as her great contemporary Molière in Tartuffe and Les femmes savantes. The successful translation by Nicolas Gueudeville is also a chameleon: originally translated and printed in Leiden, the text gradually becomes more Parisian with each passing edition. Folly’s language is bowdlerized according to the principles of bienséance, and Vianen’s illustrations, based on Holbein, are discarded as rude and old-fashioned. In 1751 they are replaced by Charles Eisen’s elegant, long-limbed, periwigged figures, dressed to the latest fashion. Although she changes her name, her language, her appearance and attire, Folly remains much the same through the ages—everlasting and omnipresent, just as the vices she laughs at. (shrink)

This article examines first of all how painters’ ability to perceive transient coloured shadows was both facilitated, and impoverished, by scientific theories of their causes. It then investigates how developing techniques of viewing the scene through a frame or half-closed eyes allowed artists to apprehend these elusive phenomena in something approaching their full richness.

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study is to investigate the ways in which religious students manage the dual identities of student and member of faith. If an “identity clash” occurs, how is it managed?...

Review of G. A. Cohen's Rescuing Justice and Equality.

Psience Fiction: The Paranormal in Science Fiction Literature is a book that really needed to be written. In an abundance of hubris I once played with the idea myself (and I was probably not alone in the thought). But now Damien Broderick has done it, and much better than I could have even approximated. Given his background as a science fiction literary critic and author himself, no other writer could be better-equipped. Psience Fiction is exactly the right title to encapsulate (...) Broderick’s chosen topic. As he notes in one passage, his purpose here is to explore “the varied representations of the paranormal in science fiction” (p.68)–though by paranormal he refers neither to ghosts nor mediumship nor UFO-related phenomena, but strictly to “paranormal” as it relates to putative mental powers that transcend the scientifically-presumed, neuro-physical limits of our minds and brains. He refines that still further in noting that what he wants to consider is “...the give and take between the science fiction paranormal and the real-world kind, tested and tallied by psi researchers” (p.5). This book is probably most easily described as a book of book reviews (though a few relevant short stories are also considered). Authors covered run the gamut from Olaf Stapledon, E.E. “Doc” Smith, James Blish and Theodore Sturgeon to Zenna Henderson, John Wyndham, Robert Heinlein, Ann McCaffery, Octavia Butler, and John Brunner, plus many more. For a literary work to be included, it must incorporate some aspect of psi as an integral plot element; a mere mention of extrasensory perception or psychokinesis does not suffice. (shrink)

Review of Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004). 160 pp.

In the beginning, there was Dava Sobel and Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time . Others followed, in a veritable flood which D. P. Miller recently dubbed the ‘Sobel Effect’. Academic historians of science have been concerned by this flood, partly because people other than them are making money out of ‘their’ subject, but also because of the ways it might affect the public perception of the history of science. (...) Like the scientists they study, historians fear that popularizers will distort in the process of simplifying. But, knowing how difficult it has been for scientists to control the popularization of their subject, historians may not expect a great deal more success. (shrink)