We are pleased to publish this WSIA edition of Trudy’s Govier’s seminal volume, Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation. Originally published in 1987 by Foris Publications, this was a pioneering work that played a major role in establishing argumentation theory as a discipline. Today, it is as relevant to the field as when it first appeared, with discussions of questions and issues that remain central to the study of argument. It has defined the main approaches to many of those (...) issues and guided the ways in which we might respond to them. From this foundation, it sets the stage for further investigations and emerging research. This is a second edition of the book that is corrected and updated by the author, with new prefaces to each chapter. (shrink)

The book also comes with an exhaustive array of study aids that enable the reader to monitor and enhance the learning process.

In 1995, the Dutch Minister of Health proposed that a randomized clinical trial (RCT) with heroin-maintenance for severe abusers be conducted. It took nearly four years of lengthy debates before the Dutch Parliament consented to the plan. Apart from the idea of prescribing heroin, the minister and her scientific advisers had to defend the quite high material and non-material costs that would arise from employing the randomized controlled design. They argued that the RCT represented the truly scientific approach and was (...) the royal way to unambiguous results. In the present article, I question this common dual justification of RCTs. First, I situate the historical origins and the basic assumptions of the ideal experiment in 20th-century economic liberalism. Secondly, using the Dutch heroin experiment as an example, I discuss human-science experimentation as an attempt to create reality rather than merely record it. Finally, I discuss some surprising responses by heroin users. These responses display the assumptions of RCTs discussed in the historical section, and underline the importance of the culture of heroin use. In the epilogue, I suggest that cultural aspects of heroin consumption can best be studied by thorough ethnographic research. (shrink)

In this paper we engage in a conversation speaking from three different perspectives and discuss the ways literature and our personal life experiences can inform policy and practice in relation to the concepts of well-being, education, and culture. We gathered around a metaphorical kitchen table, bringing to it our life experiences, as well as the literature that informed our individual research programs (positive psychology, Indigenous world view, and narrative inquiry) and we began to unpack the questions: “What role does culture (...) play in understanding and educating for well-being and why should an education system be concerned about it?”. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore how nurses are enrolled into and take part in programmes of efficiency and effectiveness. Using the philosophical theorizing about desire as a force or power, I focus specifically on what is understood as relations between desire and productivity in current Westernized health‐care systems. Use is made of the idea from Spinoza that human emotions consist only of pleasure, pain, and desire as these act as a motive force. This is then linked with (...) more contemporary work on the politics and discourses of desire. A report on the implementation of a productivity programme in the United Kingdom, The Productive Ward: Releasing time to care™, is explored for the ways its developers set about motivating nurses to endorse and enact the programme. In exploring the mechanics of desire in these processes, a view of desire as productive is promoted. Looking at desire as assembling actions, and an assemblage, moves the analysis to an interrogation of actions and practices used to enable and bring nurses to the process. Moreover, in working through the various modalities and operations of desire, the potential and limits of such projects are abstracted. Such potentials and limits are necessarily set by the intensification of power and desire in the capitalist economy, saturating areas of nursing, and health‐care provision. (shrink)

An acquaintance who works with street teens once said to me, “They live in a completely different world.” She did not mean only that they lived downtown and not in the suburbs, slept under bridges and not in beds, ate in soup kitchens instead of restaurants. She meant that street teens experienced a social reality radically different from the reality of those who have lived most of life in a relatively sheltered and stable middle-class environment. They have a different view (...) of other people, of social authority, of human nature, of political and social institutions. As my acquaintance understood it, this difference resulted from experiences at home and school, experiences with adults who were at best negligent, at worst abusive and hostile. Children were not cared for at home, fared poorly at school, then ran from home to the street. The street teens she knew were hostile and despairing and expected others to be the same. A fundamental difference was in the area of trust: these teens lacked trust in family, teachers, peers, police, even those who sought to help them. And apparently for good reason, given the circumstances from which many of them emerged. (shrink)

Self-trust is a necessary condition of personal autonomy and self-respect. Self-trust involves a positive sense of the motivations and competence of the trusted person; a willingness to depend on him or her; and an acceptance of vulnerability. It does not preclude trust in others. A person may be rightly said to have too much self-trust; however core self-trust is essential for functioning as an autonomous human being.

This paper reports the responses of 251 mental health care practitioners to a mail survey examining their views concerning ethical conflicts and practices within their work environments. Besides identifying the sources and types of conflicts they experience, respondents were asked how ethical standards have changed over the last 10 years as well as the factors influencing these changes. Conclusions and implications are outlined and future research needs are described.

Did the world change on September 11, 2001? For those who live outside of New York or Washington, life's familiar pace persists and families and jobs resume their routines. Yet everything seems different because of the dramatic disturbance in our sense of what our world means and how we exist within it. In A Delicate Balance , philosopher Trudy Govier writes that it is because our feelings and attitudes have altered so fundamentally that our world has changed. Govier believes (...) that there are ethical challenges we cannot ignore. From Plato and Aristotle on courage to Kant on revenge, to 20th Century philosopher John Rawls’s views on justice, Govier mines the world of philosophy to reflect on terrorism. Govier argues that moral complexities such as victimhood, evil, power and revenge, if properly understood, can provide a basis for hope– not despair. Govier walks the reader through this shift, challenging us to construct a new sense of the world and our place within it. (shrink)

How can we respond in the aftermath of wrongdoing? How can social trust be restored in the wake of intense political conflict? In this challenging work, philosopher Trudy Govier explores central dilemmas of political reconciliation, employing illustrative material from Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Peru, and elsewhere. Govier stresses that reconciliation is fundamentally about relationships. Whether through means of truth commissions, apologies, community processes, or criminal trials, the basic goal of reconciliation is improved social trust among alienated (...) individuals and groups. A major strength of Govier's approach is her creative practical framework for reflection. She explains that people should not to be identified with the roles they may have played, and she points out that, with reference to wrongs committed in political conflicts, individuals often play several roles. The perpetrators of some acts can be the victims of others; the victims in some circumstances may become responsive interveners in others. Rare is the political conflict in which one group commits all wrongs. Govier argues that, to build social trust and sustainable peace, acknowledgment of past wrongs is crucial. The need for mutuality in acknowledgment is an underappreciated aspect of the aftermath of conflicts. She further examines the themes of responsibility ; apology; forgiveness; reparations; the rehabilitation of child soldiers; the problems of monetary compensation; and truth-telling and truth commissions. Govier's lucid style and willingness to explore counterarguments make this a lively and thought-provoking work. (shrink)

Trust facilitates communication, love, friendship, and co-operation and is fundamentally important to human relationships and personal development. Using examples from daily life, interviews, literature, and film, Govier describes the role of trust in friendship and in family relationships as well as the connection between self-trust, self-respect, and self-esteem. She examines the reasons we trust or distrust others and ourselves, and the expectations and vulnerabilities that accompany those attitudes. But trust should not be blind. Acknowledging that distrust is often warranted, Govier (...) describes strategies for coping with distrust and designing workable relationships despite it. She also examines situations in which the integrity of interpersonal relationships has been violated by serious breaches of trust and explores themes of forgiveness, reconciliation, and the restoration of trust. By encouraging reflection on our own attitudes of trust and distrust, this fascinating book points the way to a better understanding of our relationships and ourselves. (shrink)

It is rare to find honest accounts of the difficulties and dilemmas encountered when conducting sensitive research with vulnerable research populations. This account explores some of the ethical issues raised by a qualitative interview study with lesbians and gay men about their experiences of nursing care. There is tension between the moral duty to conduct research with vulnerable and stigmatized groups in order to improve care, and the inevitable lack of resources that go with such a venture. This increases the (...) risk of harm during the process of research. The risk of harm to both the researchers and the researched is explored and the need for a support structure for both groups is raised. There is a pressing need to develop further understanding about the ways in which the dissemination of research can potentially harm already vulnerable research populations. (shrink)

Forgiveness and Revenge is a powerful exploration of our attitudes to serious wrongdoings and a careful examination of the values that underlie our thinking about revenge and forgiveness. From adulterous spouses to terrorist factions, we are surrounded by wrongdoing, yet we rarely agree which response is appropriate. The problem of how to respond realistically and sensitively to the wrongs of the past remains a perplexing one. Trudy Govier clarifies our thinking on this subject by examining the moral and practical (...) impact of revenge and forgiveness, both personal and political. Forgiveness and Revenge offers much-needed clarity and reason where emotions often prevail. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the ethics of attitudes to wrongdoing. (shrink)

An aim of all of the management of healthcare systems is the smooth provision of services. A great deal of effort is put into ensuring processes will obtain this ideal – the well‐run system. The central argument in this paper is that these processes result in a system that perpetrates violence and coercion on its clients and workers. This violence is structural and personalizing in its effects. Moreover, time and effort is taken away from the actual work of the system (...) for its management. Under such managerialist control, the idea of chaos and the need to ensure order are used to fuel an apparatus that takes the focus from other aspects of the system such as the power relations that keep the system as it is. In such an ordering, the clinical audit is promoted as a method to ensure order by keeping ahead of, or removing the potential for chaos. In using Žižek's ideas about violence it is possible to identify how efforts and attempts to correct the system are doomed to fail just as they hide how nurses' enrolment in the service of the system leads to alienation and subjectification. A central aim of this paper is to rethink how power and implicit violence are practised in such processes. To overcome the inherent violence of the audit culture, this paper suggests an interruption of audit cultures with a promotion of more radical positions for nursing practice and clinically based research. The hope is to recalculate and interrupt how nurses are to operate in the management structures that organize healthcare. (shrink)

I explore Baier, Held, Okin, Code, Noddings, and Eisler on trust and distrust. This reveals a need for reflection on the analysis, ethics, and dynamics of trust and distrust-especially the distinction between trusting and taking for granted, the feasibility of choosing greater trust, and the possibility of moving from situations of warranted distrust to trust. It is impossible to overcome the need for trust through surveillance, recourse to contracts, or legal institutions.

Our acceptance of falsely dichotomous statements is often intellectually distorting. It restricts imagination, limits opportunities, and lends support to pseudo-logical arguments. In conflict situations, the presumption that there are only two sides is often a harmful distortion. Why do so many false dichotomies seem plausible? Are all dichotomies false? What are the alternatives, if any, to such fundamental dichotomies as ‘true/false’, ‘yes/no’, ‘proponent/opponent,’ and ‘accept/reject’?

Despite the widespread agreement that the ontology of the marketing discipline is exchange, marketing ethics researchers have largely adopted a monadic viewpoint of ethical decision making. In this research, an interactionist approach is adopted in order to introduce a dyadic perspective of un/ethical decision making. The dyadic model includes each channel member's individual, situational and decision process factors linked by relationalism, an emerging paradigm in marketing channels. Relationalism is represented as a discriminating variable between perceived ethical dilemma and decision behaviour. (...) Finally, a number of theoretical propositions are presented and future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

The following three papers focus on compassion, an issue well worth our consideration in our contemporary age, and most especially during our recent national tragedy. It is hoped that these philosophical discussions of compassion may help us as we, on personal and societal levels, come to grips with immense human suffering. The topic of compassion brings us into an exploration of a cluster of related philosophical issues and is thus a good stepping off point for inquiry. The role of the (...) first paper is that of stage setting, to simply layout an approach to compassion presented by Aristotle and developed by Martha Nussbaum. This approach served as the introductory consideration in a course on compassion, taught by the first two commentators. Initially we wondered if we could sustain discussion on this narrow topic over fourteen weeks, but found the course left students with numerous questions worth their further consideration. So too in these papers, a number of issues will remain untouched, such as the relation of compassion and public policy and specific approaches to the cultivating of compassion, both of which are explored at length by Martha Nussbaum. This first paper frames our discussion, by presenting in outline form key points addressed in Martha Nussbaum’s Aristotelian discussion of the emotion of compassion, and touches upon issues developed in the next two papers. (shrink)

Dantis, Trudy As a 'definite community of Christian faithful', every parish is called to embody the presence of the church in the wider community. It does this by being a place of living communion and participation that is wholly mission-oriented, an environment conducive to hearing God's word and growing in the Christian life, and one that is engaged in dialogue, proclamation, outreach, worship and celebration. In doing so, a parish becomes 'salt' and 'light' for the community it is located (...) in. Parish vitality can therefore be likened to the 'saltiness' or 'luminosity' of a parish community. It is imperative for every parish community to grow in health and strength if it is to be an effective source of evangelisation and an authentic witness of the Gospel. As Wittberg notes, 'To the extent that their communal "salt" loses its flavor, parishes - are worse than irrelevant, because they no longer image God'. (shrink)

This article explores and offers a qualified defence of the claim that the entitlement to forgive a wrongdoer belongs to the victim of the wrong. A summary account of forgiveness is given, followed by arguments in favor of the victim's prerogative to forgive. Primary, or direct victims are then distinguished from secondary and tertiary ones, which point to a plurality of prerogatives to forgive. In cases of conflicts between these prerogatives it is emphasized that special care should be taken to (...) protect the primary victim's entitlement, without giving an absolute and exclusive status to the latter prerogative. Grounds for limiting the primary victim's prerogative regarding forgiveness include (a) cases where harm to secondary and/or tertiary victims are greater than the harm resulting from the original wrong committed against the primary victim, (b) the social dimensions of the elements of forgiveness, and (c) the need for self-forgiveness when a repentant wrongdoer is not forgiven by any of the victims. The practical significance of these arguments are illustrated by considering the criticism that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission have forgiven perpetrators in ways that inappropriately pre-empted the primary victims' entitlement to forgive. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.21(2) 2002: 97-111. (shrink)

This study is about the interaction of scientific expertise and local knowledge in the context of a contested issue: the quality and quantity of safe drinking water available to some residents in one Canadian community. The authors articulate the boundary work in which scientific and technological expertise and discourse are played out against local knowledge and water needs to prevent the construction of a water main extension that would provide a group of residents with the same water that others in (...) the community already access. The authors draw on an extensive database constructed during a three-year ethnographic study of one community; the data base includes the transcript of a public meeting, newspaper clippings, interviews, and communications between residents and town council. The authors show not only that scientists and residents differ in their assessment of water quality and quantity but also that there is a penchant for undercutting residents in their attempts to make themselves heard in the political process. (shrink)

Skin as cover: the discursive effects of 'covering' metaphors on wound care practicesThis paper outlines a Foucauldian analysis of interactions between nurses and patients during wound care procedures in a burns unit. It explores the use of Kristeva's psychoanalytic concepts of abjection and the abject body to illuminate the emotional affects of wounds on nurse and patient. In this process, I identify how cultural metaphoric understandings about skin influence and organise the care of burns patients. Such analysis suggests the import (...) of the complete skin, the medical scientific control over the definition of this work, and the emotional forces that resist such control. (shrink)

This book has been written in the hopes of equipping teachers-in-training—that is, teacher candidates—with the skills needed for action research: a process that leads to focused, effective, and responsive strategies that help students succeed.

The Second Vatican Council has a special significance in Latin America. This is especially true due to the influence of the document Gaudium et Spes. This took place at the Medellín Conference when Bishop Marcus Gregorio McGrath, C.S.C., pointed to this influence through his keynote address “The Signs of the Times.” He was prepared for this moment through his earlier theological training in Europe and his pastoral missions, especially in Chile and Panama. It was his earlier practice of Catholic Action (...) among young lay persons that led him into the “bridge theology” that was to be promoted further by Pope Francis. (shrink)

Most characters that distinguish one individual from another, like height or weight, vary continuously in populations. Continuous variation of these ‘quantitative’ traits is due to the simultaneous segregation of multiple quantitative trait loci (QTLs) as well as environmental influences. A major challenge in human medicine, animal and plant breeding and evolutionary genetics is to identify QTLs and determine their genetic properties. Studies of the classic quantitative traits, abdominal and sternopleural bristle numbers of Drosophila, have shown that: (1) many loci have (...) small effects on bristle number, but a few have large effects and cause most of the genetic variation; (2) ‘candidate’ loci involved in bristle development often have large quantitative effects on bristle number; and (3) alleles at QTLs affecting bristle number have variable degrees of dominance, interact with each other, and affect other quantitative traits, including fitness. Lessons learned from this model system will be applicable to studies of the genetic basis of quantitative variation in other species. (shrink)

On most views of the nature of moral judgments, it is possible for a person to be mistaken in the belief that it is right to act in a certain way. When someone believes that it is right to do something, does that thing on the basis of such a belief, and yet in so doing commits deeds which are wrong by moral standards other than his own, we do not quite know whether to praise him for his conscientiousness while (...) condemning his actions. He acts according to his conscience and does what he believes to be right, but his beliefs are erroneous and his actions wrong. Shall we praise the man for his conscientiousness while condemning his actions? (shrink)

Motivated by discourses that link early child development and health, nurses engage in seemingly benign surveillance of children. These practices are based on knowledge claims and technologies of developmental science, which remain anchored in assumptions of the child body as an incomplete form with a universal developmental trajectory and inherent potentiality. This paper engages in a critical discursive analysis, drawing on Donna Haraway's conceptualizations of technoscience and figuration. Using a contemporary developmental screening tool from nursing practice, this analysis traces the (...) effects of this tool through production, transformation, distribution, and consumption. It reveals how the techniques of imaging, abstraction, and measurement collide to fix the open, transformative child body in a figuration of the developing child. This analysis also demonstrates how technobiopower infuses nurses' understandings of children and structures developmentally appropriate expectations for children, parents, and nurses. Furthermore, it describes how practices that claim to facilitate healthy child development may inversely deprive children of agency and foster the production of normal or ideal children. An alternative ontological perspective is offered as a challenge to the individualism of developmental models and other dominant ideologies of development, as well as practices associated with these ideologies. In summary, this analysis argues that nurses must pay closer attention to how technobiopower infuses practices that monitor and promote child development. Fostering a critical understanding of the harmful implications of these practices is warranted and offers the space to conceive of human development in alternate and exciting ways. (shrink)

Nurses are well positioned to contribute to child protection efforts but are underutilised. This paper describes a critical discursive analysis of nursing responses to child neglect and abuse (CN&A) in British Columbia, Canada. Legal and practice guidelines were analysed alongside nurse interview texts, offering a glimpse into how nurses prevent CN&A in their everyday practice with families. Results show how the primacy of mandatory reporting to child protection authorities coordinates a series of deferrals and how nurses engage with and interrupt (...) these deferrals in everyday practice. Nurses' relational approaches are essential to gain access to the private sphere of the family to assess, plan, elicit cooperation with interventions and monitor the situation. They considered reporting to be one among many possible responses. This study highlights how nursing contributions to prevention are largely overlooked and points to the potential for a more significant role for nurses in a public health approach to child protection. (shrink)

Positivist ethnographic research situates the participant observer in an objectivist position towards the field. Using poststructural perspectives to analyse the field challenges and unsettles objectivist assumptions underpinning ethnography. Neither is merging of the two approaches completely unproblematic. A crucial element in a coherent amalgam centres around resolution of potential contradictions emanating from the place of field notes in ethnographic research, and the position of the researcher (author) vis‐a‐vis such notes. Contemporary approaches to field notes maintain that such notes are not (...) an objective description of the field, unaffected by the voice of the researcher. Rather, observational records are to be regarded as text, with characteristics in common with all texts. The ethnographic record is constituted as much by the positionality of the researcher as by the research participants. The nurse researcher can be viewed as participant in the constitution of the field. In unsettling and challenging taken‐for‐granted understandings about nursing practice, I am affirming the centrality of the position of the nurse in nursing research. (shrink)

The following three papers focus on compassion, an issue well worth our consideration in our contemporary age, and most especially during our recent national tragedy. It is hoped that these philosophical discussions of compassion may help us as we, on personal and societal levels, come to grips with immense human suffering. The topic of compassion brings us into an exploration of a cluster of related philosophical issues and is thus a good stepping off point for inquiry. The role of the (...) first paper is that of stage setting, to simply layout an approach to compassion presented by Aristotle and developed by Martha Nussbaum. This approach served as the introductory consideration in a course on compassion, taught by the first two commentators. Initially we wondered if we could sustain discussion on this narrow topic over fourteen weeks, but found the course left students with numerous questions worth their further consideration. So too in these papers, a number of issues will remain untouched, such as the relation of compassion and public policy and specific approaches to the cultivating of compassion, both of which are explored at length by Martha Nussbaum. This first paper frames our discussion, by presenting in outline form key points addressed in Martha Nussbaum’s Aristotelian discussion of the emotion of compassion, and touches upon issues developed in the next two papers. (shrink)

This article considers the relation between tolerance and hospitality. It situates this discussion in the history of philosophy with reference to a range of thinkers from Homer and Aristotle to Levinas, Derrida, and Walzer. It argues that the virtue of hospitality is important for negotiating the complexities of our contemporary world. Hospitality responds to the challenge of what is most needed for re-conceiving how one might remain committed to the values of one's own community while also remaining open to those (...) who do not share these same commitments. (shrink)

Recent policy reports documented that a growing group of students in secondary education could perform better given their expected performance. Studies showed that school performance is related to a range of social-emotional factors, including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and responsible decision making. However, experimental studies in schools on the relation between these factors and school performance are scarce and results are mixed. This study used a randomized field experiment to examine whether self-reflection on school behavior of underperforming secondary school students (...) affected their school performance (GPA), school engagement and self-concept. The sample comprised 337 9th grade students (M = 15.74 years old; SD = 0.58) from 18 secondary schools in the Netherlands. The intervention was designed in co-creation with teachers, to be as close to school practice as possible. Underperformance was measured using achievement test scores from both primary and secondary school, supplemented with teacher and parental assessments. Different model specifications were estimated to perform the analyses, and test for robustness of findings. The results showed that for treatment compliance, students with higher school motivation were approximately 29 percent more likely to comply. Students who reported higher levels of self-concept of school tasks were 17 percent less likely to comply. No significant effects of the treatment were observed on students’ GPA, school motivation, hours spent on homework or self-concept of school tasks. The treatment showed a negative effect on self-concept of leadership skills. (shrink)

Slippery slope arguments are commonly thought to be fallacious. But is there a single fallacy which they all commit? A study of applied logic texts reveals competing diagnoses of the supposed error, and several recent authors take slippery slope arguments seriously. Clearly, there is room for comment. I shall give evidence of divergence on the question of what sort of argument constitutes a slippery slope, distinguish four different types of argument which have all been deemed to be slippery slopes, and (...) contend that two of these types need involve no logical error.We find in textbook accounts three quite differently oriented treatments of slippery slope: conceptual — relating to vagueness and the ancient sorites paradox; precedential — relating to the need to treat similar cases consistently; and causal — relating to the avoidance of actions which will, or would be likely to, set off a series of undersirable events. (shrink)

We explore the relationship between argument and narrative with reference to parables. Parables are typically thought to convey a message. In examining a parable, we can ask what that message is, whether the story told provides reasons for the message, and whether those reasons are good reasons. In exploring these questions, we employ as an inves-tigative technique the strategy of reconstructing parables as argu-ments. We then proceed to con-sider the cogency of those argu-ments. One can offer arguments through narratives and, (...) in particu-lar, through parables, but that do-ing so likely brings more risks than benefits, from an epistemic point of view. (shrink)

Nursing and nursing practice both construct and are in turn constructed by the context in which they operate. Texts play a central part in that construction. As such, nursing and nursing practice can be considered to represent a reality that is textually mediated. This paper explores the notion of nursing as a textually mediated reality and offers the reader the possibility of engaging in reflection on what implications this has for nursing and their own nursing practice. The analyses provided draw (...) on aspects of die work of both Foucault and Derrida. Foucault's notion of discourse provides a vehicle for die exploration of nursing as textually mediated, as does Derrida's concept of binary oppositions. The paper thus illustrates some of die possibilities afforded nursing by poststructural analyses. In particular it does this by exploring one of the central textual constructions, impacting on die way that nursing and nursing practice are conceptualized, the mind/body binary opposition. (shrink)

The contested testimony in the Hill-Thomas ease is an illuminating test case for universalistic theories about the reliability of testimony. There is no reasonable alternative to universalistic standards of epistemic appraisal. And yet the charge by feminists and others that such criteria can be applied selectively and used to discredit and silence people is shown to be accurate. The road to a solution is to offer guidelines for the interpretation and application of these norms.

Alice Ambrose once criticized Moore for treating the proposition ‘There are external objects’ as an empirical one. She said that those who denied that we could know this proposition to be true would not accept any evidence as going against their denial of it, and were not regarding the issue of its truth as empirical. She also maintained that one could not point out an external object in the way in which one could point out a dime or nickel and (...) alleged on these grounds that saying that there are external objects is not the same sort of thing as saying that there are coins. The issue arose concerning Moore's paper, “Proof of an External World.“In “Reply to My Critics,” Moore pointed out that he had been concerned in “Proof of an External World” not to prove that we know that there are external objects, but rather to prove that there are external objects. But he applied Ambrose's remarks to that proposition. Moore rightly asserted that the fact that someone denies that there are external objects and treats all evidence as irrelevant to the issue does not show that the proposition he denies fails to be empirical. (shrink)

Nations possessing nuclear weapons have seen them as useful for many purposes. These include classic nuclear deterrence, extended nuclear deterrence, the fighting of a nuclear war ‘if deterrence fails,’ and a ‘diplomatic’ use in which the weapons are seen as implements of coercive political power. Concerning all these uses profound ethical questions arise. It is the last use which will be the focus of attention in this paper.I have chosen this subject partly because I believe that it has received insufficient (...) attention from those reflecting on nuclear policies from an ethical point of view. Discussions tend to focus on the use, threat to use, or intention to use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or threat of nuclear attack. The retention of nuclear weapons for such a purpose is far easier to rationalize than is the development of such weapons for extended deterrence, nuclear ‘diplomacy,’ or the actual waging of a nuclear war. Historically, nuclear weapons have been held by nuclear states for all these purposes. In fact, there are natural relations between the functions. When a power possesses nuclear weapons, the ultimate token of military power in the modern world, it is natural that it will seek to use them for purposes less restricted than the sole one of deterring nuclear war. Hence there is a natural development from classic deterrence to extended deterrence and the coercive use of nuclear weapons in the pursuit of national interest. There is also a natural connection between classic deterrence and the development and deployment of nuclear weapons for the purpose of fighting and ‘prevailing’ in a nuclear war. An opposing state is to be prevented from attacking by the belief that an attack would be followed by retaliation. That requires that a nuclear state indicate the will and capacity to retaliate-that is, to use these weapons in a real war if necessary. (shrink)

A new generation, earmarked the Thirteeners, is an emerging force in the marketplace. The Thirteener cohort group, so designated since they are the thirteenth generation to know the American flag and constitution, encompass over 62 million adult consumers. All the former "Mall Rats" have grown up. The normative structures that these Thirteeners employ in both acquisition and disposition retail settings is empirically assessed in this study through the use of a national sample. The findings suggest that Thirteeners are more likely (...) to attempt to rationalize away unethical retailing consumption behaviors than their parent's generation. The managerial and theoretical implications for the practice of retailing in the 1990s associated with these observations are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Ralph Johnson's proposal that in addition to premises and conclusion every argument should have a dialectical tier in which the arguer addresses objections to the argument, and considers alternative positions. After exploring several reasons for thinking that Johnson's proposal is a good one, I then raise a number of objections against it and move ahead to respond to those objections, which I do by distinguishing making out a case for a conclusion from offering an argument (...) for it, and distinguishing supplementary arguments from one's main argument. I contend that it is not realistic to see arguers as having an obligation to respond to all objections and to address all alternative positions; we must somehow discriminate those which need and merit a reply from those which do not. (shrink)