Properties and objects are everywhere, but remain a philosophical mystery. Douglas Ehring argues that the idea of tropes--properties and relations understood as particulars--provides the best foundation for a metaphysical account of properties and objects. He develops and defends a new theory of trope nominalism.

William Baird collection in Social Sciences is the gift of the Estate of William Cameron Baird.

Vol. presents a method for critically evaluating relevance in arguments based on case studies & a new relevance theory incorporating techniques of argumentation theory, logic & artificiaI intelligence. For scholars/students in argumentation & rhetoric.

The American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce, best known as the founder of pragmatism, has been influential not only in the pragmatic tradition but more recently in the philosophy of science and the study of semiotics, or sign theory. Strands of System provides an accessible overview of Peirce's systematic philosophy for those who are beginning to explore his thinking and its import for more recent trends in philosophy.

In the 1950s–60s biochemists searched intensively for a series of high-energy molecules in the cell. Although we now believe that these molecules do not exist, biochemists claimed to have isolated or identified them on at least sixteen occasions. The episode parallels the familiar eighteenth-century case of phlogiston, in illustrating how error is not simply the loss of facts but, instead, must be actively constructed. In addition, the debates surrounding each case demonstrate how revolutionary-scale disagreement is sometimes resolved by differentiating or (...) partitioning empirical domains, rather than by replacement of one theory by another. (shrink)

This monograph poses a series of key problems of evidential reasoning and argumentation. It then offers solutions achieved by applying recently developed computational models of argumentation made available in artificial intelligence. Each problem is posed in such a way that the solution is easily understood. The book progresses from confronting these problems and offering solutions to them, building a useful general method for evaluating arguments along the way. It provides a hands-on survey explaining to the reader how to use current (...) argumentation methods and concepts that are increasingly being implemented in more precise ways for the application of software tools in computational argumentation systems. It shows how the use of these tools and methods requires a new approach to the concepts of knowledge and explanation suitable for diverse settings, such as issues of public safety and health, debate, legal argumentation, forensic evidence, science education, and the use of expert opinion evidence in personal and public deliberations. (shrink)

This article applies tools from argumentation theory to slippery slope arguments used in current ethical debates on genetic engineering. Among the tools used are argumentation schemes, value-based argumentation, critical questions, and burden of proof. It is argued that so-called drivers such as social acceptance and rapid technological development are also important factors that need to be taken into account alongside the argumentation scheme. It is shown that the slippery slope argument is basically a reasonable form of argument, but is often (...) flawed when used in ethical debates because of failures to meet the requirements of its scheme. (shrink)

The current consensus is that most natural categories are not organized around strict definitions (a list of singly necessary and jointly sufficient features) but rather according to a family resemblance (FR) principle: Objects belong to the same category because they are similar to each other and dissimilar to objects in contrast categories. A number of computational models of category construction have been developed to provide an account of how and why people create FR categories (Anderson, 1990; Fisher, 1987). Surprisingly, however, (...) only a few experiments on category construction or free sorting have been run and they suggest that people do not sort examples by the FR principle. We report several new experiments and a two‐stage model for category construction. This model is contrasted with a variety of other models with respect to their ability to account for when FR sorting will and will not occur. The experiments serve to identify one basis for FR sorting and to support the two‐stage model. The distinctive property of the two‐stage model is that it assumes that people impose more structure than the examples support in the first stage and that the second stage adjusts for this difference between preferred and perceived structure. We speculate that people do not simply assimilate probabilistic structures but rather organize them in terms of discrete structures plus noise. (shrink)

Because motives and intentions are internal, and not directly observable by another agent, it has always been a problem to find a pathway of reasoning linking them to externally observable evidence...

This chapter is concerned with the foundations of Hobbes’s natural philosophy, notably his account of space and time, as well as an inertial law the author terms the “persistence principle” and a mechanistic principle of action by contact. The author argues that these foundational concepts and principles serve as a framework that places constraints upon the kinds of hypotheses that may figure in the explanation of phenomena, but they do not uniquely determine how natural philosophy is to be developed. In (...) particular, the author shows that Hobbes took questions about the infinitude and uniqueness of the world as unanswerable in principle, although he regarded the question of the vacuum as an empirical matter that could be settled by experiment. Hobbes did, however, hold that certain doctrines were incoherent and should be rejected on a priori grounds. (shrink)

One of Parfit’s arguments for the thesis that identity never matters involves generalizing from “divergence” cases in which identity arguably does not matter. The primary divergence case for Parfit is fission. According to Parfit’s assessment, it is not true that the fissioner gets what matters with respect to either fissionee by way of being identical to each fissionee but does so by way of the M-relation, psychological continuity with its normal cause, the persistence of enough of the brain. The same (...) is true in all other divergence cases by Parfit’s accounting. Parfit generalizes. From (E) Whenever M and identity diverged, it would be M that mattered, not identity. Parfit infers (F) Whenever M and identity diverge and even when these relations coincide, it is M that matters, not identity. In this paper, I challenge the inference from (E) to (F). (shrink)

Hamblin distinguished between formal and descriptive dialectic. Formal normative models of deliberation dialogue have been strongly emphasized as argumentation frameworks in computer science. But making such models of deliberation applicable to real natural language examples has reached a point where the descriptive aspect needs more interdisciplinary work. The new formal and computational models of deliberation dialogue that are being built in computer science seem to be closely related to some already existing and very well established computing technologies such as problem (...) solving and decision making, but whether or how dialectical argumentation can be helpful to support these systems remains an open question. The aim of this paper is to examine some real examples of argumentation that seem to hover on the borderlines between deliberation, problem solving and decision making. (shrink)

The Nature and Status of Critical Questions in Argumentation Schemes.

The concept of dominance poses several dilemmas. First, while entrenched in genetics education, the metaphor of dominance promotes several misconceptions and misleading cultural perspectives. Second, the metaphors of power, prevalence and competition extend into science, shaping assumptions and default concepts. Third, because genetic causality is complex, the simplified concepts of dominance found in practice are highly contingent or inconsistent. The conceptual problems are illustrated in the history of studies on the evolution of dominance. Conceptual clarity may be fostered, I claim, (...) by viewing diploid organisms as diphenic and by framing genetic causality modestly through individual alleles and their corresponding haplophenotypes. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Method of Inquiry Doubt, Intuition, and Certainty Peirce's Reconstruction of the “method for guiding one's reason” A Transformed Ontology.

The distribution of organisms in morphologic space is clumpy. Cats are like felids, dogs are like canids and snails are (mostly) like gastropods. But cats are not like dogs and snails are not like clams. This clumpy distribution of morphology has long posed one of the greatest challenges to evolutionary biologists. Does it represent the extinction and disappearance of a oncecontinuous distribution of morphologies, clades perched on the summits of persistent selective peaks ala Sewell Wright, or a primary signature of (...) the evolutionary processes? And if the latter, what processes are responsible for generating it? Although often couched in discussions of the origin of higher taxa, such taxa are but proxies for this clumpy distribution, and ultimately the latter is the critical issue for macroevolution and for Stephen Jay Gould’s opus. Underneath all the controversies over whether species constitute individuals, whether speciation serves to divide intra-specific adaptation driven by natural selection from a set of inter- and supra-specific evolutionary processes, and over the impact of catastrophic mass extinctions on evolutionary trends, the fundamental issue is simply one of clumpiness (or, if you prefer, the inhomogeneous distribution of morphologies). Iurii Filipchenko, a Russian geneticist and the mentor of Theodosius Dobzhansky, introduced the term macroevolution in 1927 because he believed that the origin of the characters associated with higher taxa (those beyond the species level) required a different process of evolution. Filipchenko believed macroevolution was driven by cytoplasmic inheritance, but his general argument was consistent with other saltationists and macro-mutationists of the time, including the paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborne and the geneticist Richard Goldschmidt. These evolutionary biologists shared the.. (shrink)

Developing the ethics of palliative sedation, particularly in contrast to terminal sedation, requires consideration of the relation between body and soul and of the nature of death and dying. Christianly considered, it also requires attention to the human vocation to immortality and hence to the relation between medicine and discipline. Leaning on Augustine’s rendering of the latter, this paper provides a larger anthropological and soteriological frame of reference for the ethics of palliative sedation, organized by way of nine briefly expounded (...) theses. It argues that palliative sedation, like other elements of medicine, is appropriate where, and only where, it properly orders care for the body to the requirements of care for the soul. (shrink)

Acupuncture, the traditional Chinese practice of needling to alleviate pain, offers a striking case where scientific accounts in two cultures, East and West, diverge sharply. Yet the Chinese comfortably embrace the apparent ontological incommensurability. Their pragmatic posture resonates with the New Experimentalism in the West--but with some provocative differences. The development of acupuncture in China (and not in the West) further suggests general research strategies in the context of discovery. My analysis also exemplifies how one might fruitfully pursue a comparative (...) philosophy of science that explores how other cultures investigate and validate their conclusions about the natural world. (shrink)

In this engaging book, Douglas Anderson begins with the assumption that philosophy—the Greek love of wisdom—is alive and well in American culture. At the same time, professional philosophy remains relatively invisible. Anderson traverses American life to find places in the wider culture where professional philosophy in the distinctively American tradition can strike up a conversation. How might American philosophers talk to us about our religious experience, or political engagement, or literature—or even, popular music? Anderson’s second aim is to find (...) places where philosophy happens in nonprofessional guises—cultural places such as country music, rock’n roll, and Beat literature. He not only enlarges the tradition of American philosophers such as John Dewey and William James by examining lesser-known figures such as Henry Bugbee and Thomas Davidson, but finds the theme and ideas of American philosophy in some unexpected places, such as the music of Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, and Bruce Springsteen, and the writingsof Jack Kerouac.The idea of “philosophy Americana” trades on the emergent genre of “music Americana,” rooted in traditional themes and styles yet engaging our present experiences. The music is “popular” but not thoroughly driven by economic considerations, and Anderson seeks out an analogous role for philosophical practice, where philosophy and popular culture are co-adventurers in the life of ideas. Philosophy Americana takes seriously Emerson’s quest for the extraordinary in the ordinary and James’s belief that popular philosophy can still be philosophy. (shrink)

Baudrillard, Jean (1929) was born in the cathedral town of Reims, France. His grandparents were peasants, his parents became civil servants, and he was the first member of his family to pursue an advanced education. In 1956, he began working as a professor of secondary education in a French high school (Lyceé) and in the early 1960s did editorial work for the French publisher Seuil. Trained as a Germanist, Baudrillard translated Germany literary works including Brecht and Peter Weiss, although he (...) turned to the study of sociology and for some decades was a sociology professor at Nanterre. (shrink)

Ernst Friedrich's War Against War is an important document in the struggle against the barbarism of modern warfare. Outraged by the unprecedented brutality and massive destruction of the First World War, Friedrich sought out and then published this collection of pictures and other visual artifacts which illustrate not only the human suffering and death produced in the war but also the lies and hypocrisy of the political and economic forces which promoted it. Aiming at an international audience, Friedrich had the (...) book's introduction written in four languages-- German, Dutch, English and French--and accompanied his collection of images with captions in these languages.{1} It was the first extensive published collection of photographic images of the atrocities of World War I, and thus brought the public face to face with a powerful panorama of the horrors of war through the media of photography and other mass images. Friedrich hoped that when they actually saw the reality of modern warfare, people everywhere would become more critical of war, the military, and militarism. (shrink)