This article deals with issues of litigation based on claims of personal injuries. It briefly describes the way that economists have tended to think about the “litigation process.” It discusses a number of areas of empirical work. It begins with case outcomes and looks at the ways in which the legal system itself can influence matter through the encouragement of information transfer and the rules used for allocating legal costs. It considers the role of lawyers by looking at the effects (...) of different legal fee arrangements on case outcomes. Furthermore, it discusses the liability-based legal system that produces the deterrence benefits often claimed for in conceptual work. The deterrent potentials of liability-based litigations are subject to objective and subjective contexts of the injurer. Finally, the article concludes that alternative means such as the “no fault” scheme that allots compensation irrespective of personal fault of the accused, require greater analysis. (shrink)

This article deals with issues of litigation based on claims of personal injuries. It briefly describes the way that economists have tended to think about the “litigation process.” It discusses a number of areas of empirical work. It begins with case outcomes and looks at the ways in which the legal system itself can influence matter through the encouragement of information transfer and the rules used for allocating legal costs. It considers the role of lawyers by looking at the effects (...) of different legal fee arrangements on case outcomes. Furthermore, it discusses the liability-based legal system that produces the deterrence benefits often claimed for in conceptual work. The deterrent potentials of liability-based litigations are subject to objective and subjective contexts of the injurer. Finally, the article concludes that alternative means such as the “no fault” scheme that allots compensation irrespective of personal fault of the accused, require greater analysis. (shrink)

A new pragmatic approach, based on the latest developments in argumentation theory, analyzing appeal to expert opinion as a form of argument. Reliance on authority has always been a common recourse in argumentation, perhaps never more so than today in our highly technological society when knowledge has become so specialized—as manifested, for instance, in the frequent appearance of "expert witnesses" in courtrooms. When is an appeal to the opinion of an expert a reasonable type of argument to make, and when (...) does it become a fallacy? This book provides a method for the evaluation of these appeals in everyday argumentation. Specialized domains of knowledge such as science, medicine, law, and government policy have gradually taken over as the basis on which many of our rational decisions are made daily. Consequently, appeal to expert opinion in these areas has become a powerful type of argument. Challenging an argument based on expert scientific opinion, for example, has become as difficult as it once was to question religious authority. Walton stresses that even in cases where expert opinion is divided, the effect of it can still be so powerful that it overwhelms an individual's ability to make a decision based on personal deliberation of what is right or wrong in a given situation. The book identifies the requirements that make an appeal to expert opinion a reasonable or unreasonable argument. Walton's new pragmatic approach analyzes that appeal as a distinctive form of argument, with an accompanying set of appropriate critical questions matching the form. Throughout the book, a historical survey of the key developments in the evolution of the argument from authority, dating from the time of the ancients, is given, and new light is shed on current problems of "junk science" and battles between experts in legal argumentation. (shrink)

Douglas N. Walton considers the question of whether the conventions of informal conversation can be articulated more precisely than they are at present. Specifically, he addresses the problem of the fallacy of ad hominem argumentation as it occurs in natural settings. Can rules be formulated to determine if criticisms of apparent hypocrisy in an argument are defensible or refutable? Walton suggests that they can, and ultimately defends the thesis that ad hominem reasoning is not fallacious per se. He carries his (...) analysis to the core of action--theoretic reasoning--by examining a number of specimen arguments. As suggested by the title, the conclusion of ad hominem argument is demonstrated to be relative to the arguer's position. In the appendixes of the book, articles by Gerald McAuliffe and Gordon R. Lowe illustrate vivid and powerful cases in which Walton's contentions are put to the test. (shrink)

Most people believe that we have a duty to gather evidence on both sides of central moral and political controversies, in order to fulfil our epistemic responsibilities and come to hold justified cognitive attitudes on these matters. I argue, on the contrary, that to the extent to which these controversies require special expertise, we have no such duty. We are far more likely to worsen than to improve our epistemic situation by becoming better informed on these questions. I suggest we (...) do better to embrace the views of experts who are also morally wise. I argue that this is likely to lead to more accurate beliefs about these political and moral controversies; in any case, it will avoid the incoherence and irrationality which are the likely consequence of open-minded evidence gathering. (shrink)

McKenna’s critique (rather than criticisms) of idealized approaches to epistemology is an important contribution to the literature. In this brief discussion, I set out his main concerns about more idealized approaches, within and beyond social epistemology, before turning to some issues I think he neglects. I suggest that it’s important to pay attention to the prestige hierarchy in philosophy, and to how that hierarchy can serve ideological purposes. The greater prestige of more abstract approaches plays a role in determining what (...) issues and what voices we attend to. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to understand ethical theory not just as a set of well-developed philosophical perspectives but as a range of moral capacities that human beings more or less grow into over the course of their lives. To this end, we explore the connection between formal ethical theories and stage developmental psychologies, showing how individuals mature morally, regarding their duties, responsibilities, ideals, goals, values, and interests. The primary method is to extract from the writings of Kohlberg and his (...) students the cues that help to flesh out a developmental picture of a wide range of ethical perspectives. Thus, developmental psychology benefits from gaining a broader understanding of “morality” and “ethics,” and ethical theory benefits from a richer understanding of how moral maturity arises from youthful beginnings in juvenile and adolescent thinking. Results of this study offer insight into the difficulty of teaching ethics and a refined ability to assess moral maturity in business activity. (shrink)

Some 20 years ago Todd and colleagues proposed that rhythm perception is mediated by the conjunction of a sensory representation of the auditory input and a motor representation of the body (Todd, 1994a, 1995 ), and that a sense of motion from sound is mediated by the vestibular system (Todd, 1992a, 1993b ). These ideas were developed into a sensory-motor theory of rhythm and beat induction (Todd et al., 1999 ). A neurological substrate was proposed which might form the biological (...) basis of the theory (Todd et al., 2002 ). The theory was implemented as a computational model and a number of experiments conducted to test it. In the following time there have been several key developments. One is the demonstration that the vestibular system is primal to rhythm perception, and in related work several experiments have provided further evidence that rhythm perception is body dependent. Another is independent advances in imaging, which have revealed the brain areas associated with both vestibular processing and rhythm perception. A third is the finding that vestibular receptors contribute to auditory evoked potentials (Todd et al., 2014a, b ). These behavioral and neurobiological developments demand a theoretical overview which could provide a new synthesis over the domain of rhythm perception. In this paper we suggest four propositions as the basis for such a synthesis. (1) Rhythm perception is a form of vestibular perception; (2) Rhythm perception evokes both external and internal guidance of somatotopic representations; (3) A link from the limbic system to the internal guidance pathway mediates the “dance habit”; (4) The vestibular reward mechanism is innate. The new synthesis provides an explanation for a number of phenomena not often considered by rhythm researchers. We discuss these along with possible computational implementations and alternative models and propose a number of new directions for future research. (shrink)

Drawn sequences of images, like those in comics and picture stories, are a pervasive and fundamental way that humans have communicated for millennia. Yet, the study of visual narratives has only recently gained traction in Cognitive Science. Here we explore what has held back the study of the cognition of visual narratives, and why researchers should join in scholarship of this ubiquitous aspect of expression.

The novice/expert problem is the problem of knowing which apparent expert to trust. Following Alvin Goldman’s lead, a number of philosophers have developed criteria that novices can use to distinguish more from less trustworthy experts. While the criteria the philosophers have identified are indeed useful in guiding expert choice, I argue, they can’t do the work that Goldman and his successors want from them: avoid a kind of testimonial scepticism. We can’t deploy them in the way needed to avoid such (...) scepticism, because it would take genuine expertise to do so. I argue that attempts to deploy them in this sort of deep way involve a kind of transgression akin to, and at least as unreliable as, epistemic trespassing. We should give up trying to solve the novice/expert problem and instead promote better epistemic trust. (shrink)

It would not be an exaggeration to say that pluralism was central to the philosophical thought of William James. Repeatedly, James claimed that the difference between monism and pluralism was the "most pregnant" in philosophy.1 Radical empiricism, James's distinctive metaphysical vision, was first introduced as the view that pluralism was a plausible hypothesis about the permanent state of the world, and this pluralism continued to be a central feature of his philosophy in later years.2The assertion that pluralism was a valid (...) philosophical hypothesis was not merely theoretical, but practical. James often connected pluralism with democracy, and monism with "despotism" (James... (shrink)

Advancing a creolizing reading of the eighteenth-century philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this volume explores Rousseau’s strong resonances in Caribbean thought and politics.

In this concise and lucid survey, originally published in 1972, the author considers the major theoretical perspectives influential in the psychology of thinking at the time. They are looked at in relation to the problems which they are designed to answer and their success in accounting for the experimental evidence.

Philosophers who advocate the possibility of spectrum inversion often conclude that the qualitative content of experiential states pose a serious problem for functionalism. I argue that in order for the inversion hypothesis to support this conclusion one needs to show that it generalizes to all species of qualia. By examining features of touch, taste, and olfactory sensations, I show there is good reason to resist this generalization, in which case appeals to the possibility of spectral inversion are considerably less effective (...) than they may initially appear. (shrink)

The ArgumentPressures to lower health-care costs remain an important stimulus to eugenic approaches. Prenatal diagnosis followed by abortion of affected fetuses has replaced sterilization as the major eugenic technique. Voluntary acceptance has replaced coercion, but subtle pressures undermine personal autonomy. The failure of the old eugenics to accurately predict who will have affected offspring virtually disappears when prenatal diagnosis is used to predict Mendelian disorders. However, when prenatal diagnosis is used to detect inherited susceptibilities to adult-onset, common, complex disorders, considerable (...) uncertainty is inherent in the prediction. Intolerance and the resurgence of genetic determinism are current pressures for a eugenic approach. The increasing use of carrier screening and of prenatal diagnosis could itself generate intolerance for those who refuse the procedures. Genetic determinism deflects society from social action that would reduce the burden of disease far more than even the maximum use of eugenics. (shrink)

(2011). Higher Education and International Student Mobility in the Global Knowledge Economy. By K. Guruz. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 59, Research capacity building, pp. 355-357.

Hume is normally—and in my view, correctly—taken to be a legal conventionalist. However, the nature of Hume's conventionalism has not been well understood. Scholars have often interpreted David Hume as being largely indifferent to the specifics of the laws, so long as they accomplish their basic task of protecting people's property. I argue that this is not correct. Hume thinks certain systems of law will accomplish their purpose, of coordinating people's behaviour for the benefit of all, better than others. He (...) introduces two concepts, which I call generality and convenience, to designate those features of the law that allow it to best accomplish its purpose. Of the two, generality is the more important. The ability to implement a system of what Hume calls “general laws” is a feature common to those governments he considers “civilized” rather than “barbarous.” A set of more specific criteria may be extracted from Hume's texts, which laws must meet if they are to be considered general. Many of the criteria Hume identifies later become associated with theorists of the so-called “rule of law.” Hume's conventionalism can thus be read an important development beyond that of Hobbes, one that lays a foundation upon which later theorists such as A.V. Dicey are able to build. (shrink)

identity theory , usually attributed to J.J.C. Smart (Smart, 1959) and U.T. Place (Place, 1956), claimed that kinds of mental states are identical to kinds of brain states. Sensations of pain, for instance, were said to be identical to the firing of C-fibres or some such type of neurological state. According to this view, then, pain, conceived as a _kind_ of mental state, is said to be _reduced_ to a certain kind of neurological state. The reduction envisaged here was modelled (...) on the kind of reduction seen in other areas of the sciences. For instance, lightning can be said to be reduced to a rapid discharge of electrons in the atmosphere. When such a reduction is made scientists are not saying that there are two phenomena that are correlated, but rather that lightning is. (shrink)

This paper offers an original solution to the problem of the many, built on a foundation of powers-based causation. At its most basic, the solution should be understood as a type of maximality response, and on those grounds its originality might be questioned. However, it is argued that novelty of the solution owes as much to the meta-metaphysical context in which the solution is framed as it does the model of causal powers. A discussion of paradigms in metaphysics is included.

This article offers a critical overview of Virilio's engagement with the world of architecture. It surveys his involvement with the actual design process, and charts the development of his theoretical work from his early interest in typology to his more recent fascination with dromology. The article highlights the positive contributions made by Virilio in these fields, but so too it seeks to expose the 'Achilles' heel' in his approach. Virilio's work is shown to be plagued by a consistent aestheticizing impulse, (...) which acts as a form of anaesthesia and 'numbs' the concern for the political. Virilio can therefore be compared to Futurists such as Marinetti, and the shortcomings which Walter Benjamin found in Marinetti's work can be seen to be echoed in that of Virilio. (shrink)

In Method, Meaning and Revelation, Ormerod examines the writings of Lonergan to ascertain his theology of revelation and to place this in the context of current theologies of revelation, Rahner, Pannenberg, and Lindbeck. Ormerod's synthesis of Lonergan's position is that of seeing revelation as the entry of divine meanings and values into human history. A valuable addition to the study of the work of Lonergan.