In replying to Jay Schleusener, I have also answered many of the objections put less abstractly, though often more sharply, by Stanley Fish. For instance, Fish's assertion that my category of unintended negative consequences "will be filled by whatever does not accord with what Rader has decreed to be the positive constructive intention" is essentially the same charge brought by Schleusener and requires no further substantive answer than I have already offered here and, for that matter, in my original essay. (...) I would point out, however, that in this remark as elsewhere Fish loads his statements with inaccurate pejoratives: I do not decree but postulate the positive constructive intention and test it for explanatory adequacy by deduction open at every point to the counterdemonstration of fallacy. I would point out also that, in making this charge, he operates under different explanatory standards from those he adopts elsewhere. The statement quoted imputes to my theory as a special defect the fact of its supposedly self-fulfilling and nonfalsifiable character, whereas later Fish clearly asserts that all interpretations including his own are necessarily self-confirming. Ralph W. Rader has written Tennyson's "Maud": The Biographical Genesis. Among his influential articles are "Literary Form in Factual Narrative: The Example of Boswell's Johnson" and "The Concept of Genre and Eighteenth-Century Studies." He is professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Fact, Theory, and Literary Explanation" , "The Dramatic Monologue and Related Lyric Forms", and "The Literary Theoretical Contribution of Sheldon Sacks". (shrink)

We are free to get our theories where we will. As Einstein said, the emergence of a theory is like an egg laid by a chicken, "auf einmal ist es da.1" In practice theories are usually derived as improvements on earlier theories, as better tools are refinements of earlier, cruder ones; and they are directed explanatorily not at the facts of their own construction but at independently specifiable facts which, left unexplained by earlier theories, have therefore refuted them. A new (...) theory should cogently and directly explain all that its predecessors explain and in addition those particular facts which they conspicuously do not explain. The ideal is to have the simplest possible premises explaining most precisely the widest possible range of problematical facts. · 1. Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times , p.173 n. Ralph W. Rader has written Tennyson's "Maud": The Biographical Genesis. Among his influential articles are "Literary Form in Factual Narrative: The Example of Boswell's Johnson" and "The Concept of Genre and Eighteenth-Century Studies." He is professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. His contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Explaining Our Literary Understanding: A Response to Jay Schleusener and Stanley Fish" , "The Dramatic Monologue and Related Lyric Forms", and "The Literary Theoretical Contribution of Sheldon Sacks". (shrink)

The most distinctive and highly valued poems of the modern era offer an image of a dramatized "I" acting in a concrete setting. The variety and importance of the poems which fall under this description are suggested simply by the mention of such names as "Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard," "Tintern Abbey," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ulysses," "My Last Duchess," "Dover Beach," "The Windhover," "The Darkling Thrush," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Leda and the Swan," "The Love Song of J. Alfred (...) Prufrock," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." The power and beauty of such poems seems intimately connected with the fact of their dramatic integrity and autonomy, and we have all been taught, in analyzing them, to refer to a "speaker" existing independent of the poet and to avoid the "intentional" and "biographical" fallacies which spuriously link the poem to the poet and the world outside the poem. Such an approach tends to undercut any notion that a poem has a single definite meaning, the meaning the poet gave it, and to support the idea that the meaning of a poem is indeterminate and/or multiple. All this is quite in accord with the orthodox critical doctrine that poetic language is differentiated from scientific language and preserved from competition with it by the fact that it is nonreferential, making no claim upon the real world; and complex, indefinite, and alogical, where scientific language is simple, definite, and logical. Ralph W. Rader is chairman of the department of English at the University of California at Berkeley. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Fact, Theory, and Literary Explanation" , "Explaining Our Literary Understanding: A Response to Jay Schleusener and Stanley Fish" , and "The Literary Theoretical Contribution of Sheldon Sacks" . Professor Rader's influential studies include Tennyson's "Maud": The Biography Genesis, "Literary Form in Factual Narrative: The Example of Boswell's Johnson," and "The Concept of Genre and Eighteenth-century Studies.". (shrink)

“O, rocks!” Molly exclaims in impatience with Bloom’s first definition of metempsychosis, “tell us in plain words” . Looking forward, then, we remember that Bloom asks Murphy if he has seen the Rock of Gibraltar and asks further what year that would have been and if Murphy remembers the boats that plied the strait. “I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea,” replies Murphy . Bloom’s interest derives from Molly’s connection with Gibraltar, and Molly herself in her monologue remembers (...) the boats well and thinks of missing the boat at Algeciras , just before the book ends with her thoughts of the awful deepdown torrent,” the tide that moves like a river through the strait. Imaginatively she moves with that torrent, figuratively the torrent of time that plunges from the future to the past, which she accepts, with her yes, going deeply with the flow of life, and with her goes Murphy/Joyce, touching on Gibraltar at last. Molly remembers Ulysses S. Grant getting off a boat in Gibraltar, an occurrence that Adams sees as unduly stretching probability merely in order to bring Molly in incidental touch with a man named Ulysses.19 But remembering that Murphy is a “wily old customer,” we may remember also that the Ulysses of Joyce’s favorite Dante cannot rest with Penelope but, in search of knowledge and excellence, moves on through the two rocks of the straits of Gibraltar, the pillars of Hercules, to further adventure and also to destruction; and we may then think that with this reference, Joyce took pains to tell us that the Ulysses of this book here completes in hidden climax the design and purpose of his work, and sails on to oblivion, or rather to dispersion and reconstitution as everyone in the new adventure of Finnegans Wake. 19. See Adams, Surface and Symbol, p. 233. Ralph W. Rader, professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Tennyson’s “Maud”: The Biographical Genesis. He is currently working on a theoretical study of form in the novel and other genres. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “The Literary Theoretical Contribution of Sheldon Sacks” and “The Dramatic Monologue and Related Lyric Forms”. (shrink)

Behind all of Sheldon Sacks' writing and teaching lay an intense belief in the objectivity of literary experience and our capacity to achieve a shared conceptual understanding of the forms which underlie it. Literary criticism for him was not the critic's unique and unrepeatable performance but a serious inquiry—a critical inquiry—seeking explicit and precise explanatory concepts which others could grasp, test, and build upon. His effort was to show that we could in significant measure understand and explain literature and its (...) value as standing independent of our understanding and explanation, and it was this double emphasis on the real being of literature and the possibility of valid conceptualization of it which gave his thought its appeal for those whom it influences. His creative constitution—and the length and circumstances of his life—were such as to allow only the one sustained effort of Fiction and the Shape of Belief and a series of articles in which he modified and expanded the application of the ideas developed therein. Yet in this relatively small body of work he revised and extended the ideas of the Chicago School within which he worked so as to achieve what seem to me genuine advances in the explicit conception of novelistic forms—what might be called portable ideas, sharp and definite enough to be adopted and used and in their turn revised and redefined by others; this sets them apart from much critical work and marks their value and his intention. Ralph W. Rader, chairman of the department of English at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of Tennyson's "Maud": The Biographical Genesis. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Fact, Theory, and Literary Explanation" , "Explaining Our Literary Understanding: A Response to Jay Schleusener and Stanley Fish" , and "The Dramatic Monologue and Related Lyric Forms". (shrink)

Not long after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, an American citizen was captured by U.S. soldiers on he battlefield carrying a weapon and wearing the dress of a Taliban soldier. Heralded by the news media as the “American Taliban,” he became a spectacle, bound, gagged, naked and blind-folded on a stretcher in a photo taken soon after his capture. The story of how the homeschooled twenty-year-old from a middle-class Northern California family became an enemy combatant in the Afghani desert piqued (...) the popular imagination. After converting to Islam, he went to Yemen, learned Arabic, returned home and then left again to attend a madrassa (or Islamic religious school) before receiving training at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Some Americans reacted to the young man’s story with wonder; others with loathing. How did this youth stray from the values that most Americans hold dear? In fact, he did not. Similar to Paul Maud’dib who, at the end of Dune Messiah, wandered into the desert a blind holy man, the American Taliban had acted in accordance with values that most American prize: self-reliance, ingenuity, spirituality and practical know-how. It is widely believed that the Fremen culture derives from their religion, Zensunni , an imaginative blending of Zen Buddhism and Sunni Muslim beliefs. However, a closer look reveals that the Fremen (similar to the American Taliban) were shockingly American in their core values. To demonstrate this, I begin by discussing the weirdness of Dune’s Fremen, their religion, customs and lifestyle. Then, I give a brief summary of American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous essay “Self-Reliance” followed by a similar treatment of John Dewey’s notion of democracy as a way of life. The essay returns to paint a clearer picture of the American Fremen and their exhilarating though dangerous faith in jihad as a way of life. (shrink)

This is a book about normativity -- where the central normative terms are words like 'ought' and 'should' and their equivalents in other languages. It has three parts: The first part is about the semantics of normative discourse: what it means to talk about what ought to be the case. The second part is about the metaphysics of normative properties and relations: what is the nature of those properties and relations whose pattern of instantiation makes propositions about what ought to (...) be the case true. The third part is about the epistemology of normative beliefs: how we could ever know, or even have rational or justified belief in, propositions about what ought to be the case. (shrink)

69 Thompson-Schill, S.L. _et al. _(1997) Role of left inferior prefrontal cortex 59 Buckner, R.L. _et al. _(1996) Functional anatomic studies of memory in retrieval of semantic knowledge: a re-evaluation _Proc. Natl. Acad._ retrieval for auditory words and pictures _J. Neurosci. _16, 6219–6235 _Sci. U. S. A. _94, 14792–14797 60 Buckner, R.L. _et al. _(1995) Functional anatomical studies of explicit and 70 Baddeley, A. (1992) Working memory: the interface between memory implicit memory retrieval tasks _J. Neurosci. _15, 12–29 and cognition (...) _J. Cogn. Neurosci. _4, 281–288 61 Bäckman, L. _et al. _(1997) Brain activation in young and older adults 71 Petrides, M. (1994) Frontal lobes and behavior _Curr. Opin. Neurobiol._ during implicit and explicit retrieval _J. Cogn. Neurosci. _9, 378–391. (shrink)

He further argues that it is necessary to rethink traditional conceptions of argument, and to find a position that avoids the limitations of both the highly abstract approach of formal logic and the highly contextualized approaches of rhetoric and communication theory.".

This book evaluates the widespread preference in philosophy of mind for varieties of property dualism over other alternatives to physicalism. It takes the standard motivations for property dualism as a starting point and argues that these lead directly to nonphysical substances resembling the soul of traditional metaphysics. In the first half of the book, the author clarifies what is at issue in the choice between theories that posit nonphysical properties only and those that posit nonphysical substances. The crucial question, he (...) argues, is whether one posits nonphysical things that satisfy an Aristotelian-Cartesian independence definition of substance: nonphysical things that could exist in the absence of anything else. In the second half, the author argues that standard and Russellian monist forms of property dualism are far less plausible than we usually suppose. Most significantly, the presuppositions of one of the leading arguments for property dualism, the conceivability argument, lead by parity of reasoning to the view that conscious subjects are nonphysical substances. He concludes that if you posit nonphysical properties in response to the mind-body problem then you should be prepared to posit nonphysical substances as well. Mainstream philosophy of mind must take nonphysical substances far more seriously than it has done for the best part of a century. The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

What exactly is reasoning? Like many other philosophers, I shall endorse a broadly causal conception of reasoning. Reasoning is a causal process, in which one mental event (say, one’s accepting the conclusion of a certain argument) is caused by an antecedent mental event (say, one’s considering the premises of the argument). Just like causal accounts of action and causal accounts of perception, causal accounts of reasoning have to confront a version of what has come to be known as the problem (...) of deviant causal chains. In this paper, I shall propose an account of the nature of reasoning, incorporating a solution to the specific version of the deviant causal chains problem that arises for accounts of reasoning. One striking feature of my solution is that it requires that certain normative facts are causally efficacious. It might be thought that this feature will make my account incompatible with any plausibly naturalistic approach to understanding the mind. I shall argue that this is not so: my account of the nature of reasoning is quite compatible with plausible versions of naturalism. (shrink)

Moral disagreement has long been thought to create serious problems for certain views in metaethics. More specifically, moral disagreement has been thought to pose problems for any metaethical view that rejects relativism—that is, for any view that implies that whenever two thinkers disagree about a moral question, at least one of those thinkers’ beliefs about the question is not correct. In this essay, I shall outline a solution to one of these problems. As I shall argue, it turns out in (...) the end that this problem is not really a special problem about moral disagreement at all: it is a general problem about disagreement as such. For this reason, in the later sections of this essay, I shall turn to some general questions in epistemology, about the epistemic significance of disagreement. (shrink)

This paper outlines a new approach to the task of giving an account of the meaning of moral statements: a sort of "conceptual role semantics", according to which the meaning of moral terms is given by their role in practical reasoning. This role is sufficient both to distinguish the meaning of any moral term from that of other terms, and to determine the property or relation (if any) that the term stands for. The paper ends by suggesting reasons for regarding (...) this "conceptual role semantics" approach as preferable to noncognitivism, the causal theory of reference, and noncircular conceptual analysis. (shrink)

In this paper, I apply the "conceptual role semantics" approach that I have proposed elsewhere (according to which the meaning of normative terms is given by their role in practical reasoning or deliberation) to the meaning of the term 'ought'. I argue that this approach can do three things: It can give an adequate explanation of the special connection that normative judgments have to practical reasoning and motivation for action. It can give an adequate account of why the central principles (...) of deontic logic are correct. It can give an explanation of the precise ways in which the term 'ought' is systematically context-sensitive, so that the term expresses different (but systematically related) concepts in different contexts. (shrink)

This article proposes a new theory of rational decision, distinct from both causal decision theory (CDT) and evidential decision theory (EDT). First, some intuitive counterexamples to CDT and EDT are presented. Then the motivation for the new theory is given: the correct theory of rational decision will resemble CDT in that it will not be sensitive to any comparisons of absolute levels of value across different states of nature, but only to comparisons of the differences in value between the available (...) options within states of nature; however, the correct theory will also resemble EDT in that it will rely on conditional probabilities (not unconditional probabilities). The new theory gives a prominent role to the notion of a “benchmark” for each state of nature, by comparison with which the value of the available options in that state of nature are measured, and so it has been called the Benchmark Theory (BT). It is argued that BT gives the right verdict on the cases that seem to be counterexamples to CDT and EDT. Finally, some objections to BT are considered and answered. (shrink)

If beliefs are subject to a basic norm of correctness—roughly, to the principle that a belief is correct only if the proposition believed is true—how can this norm guide believers in forming their beliefs? Answer: this norm guides believers indirectly: believers are directly guided by requirements of rationality—which are themselves explained by this norm of correctness. The fundamental connection between rationality and correctness is probabilistic. Incorrectness comes in degrees; for beliefs, these degrees of incorrectness are measured by quadratic scoring rules, (...) such as the so-called Brier score. This account is defended against objections; and its implications for suspension of judgement are explored. (shrink)

What reasons for action do we have? What explains why we have these reasons? This paper articulates some of the basic structural features of a theory that would provide answers to these questions. According to this theory, reasons for action are all grounded in intrinsic values, but in a way that makes room for a thoroughly non-consequentialist view of the way in which intrinsic values generate reasons for aaction.

Often, when one faces a choice between alternative actions, there are reasons both for and against each alternative. On one way of understanding these words, what one “ought to do all things considered (ATC)” is determined by the totality of these reasons. So, these reasons can somehow be “combined” or “aggregated” to yield an ATC verdict on these alternatives. First, various assumptions about this sort of aggregation of reasons are articulated. Then it is shown that these assumptions allow for the (...) proof of a “Reasons Aggregation Theorem” – parallel to John Harsanyi’s 1955 “Social Aggregation Theorem”. All reasons for action are grounded in reason-providing values; and, for every such reason-providing value, there is in principle a way of measuring how strongly this value counts against each alternative. The theorem tells us that the appropriate measure of how much reason ATC there is against each alternative is simply a weighted sum of the strengths with which these values count against that alternative; the agent ought not ATC to perform an action iff there is ATC more reason against it than against some available alternative. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that the intentional is normative. (This claim is the analogue, within the philosophy of mind, of the claim that is often made within the philosophy of language, that meaning is normative.) But what exactly does this claim mean? And what reason is there for believing it? In this paper, I shall first try to clarify the content of the claim that the intentional is normative. Then I shall examine a number of the arguments that philosophers have (...) advanced for this claim (and for the parallel claim that meaning is normative). As we shall see, many of these arguments are unsuccessful. However, I shall close by giving a sketch of what may be a successful argument for this claim. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with the distinction that most contemporary epistemologists express by distinguishing between “propositional” and “doxastic” justification. The goal is to develop an account of this distinction that applies, not just to full or outright beliefs, but also to partial credences—and indeed, in principle, to attitudes of all kinds. The standard way of explaining this distinction, in terms of the “basing relation”, is criticized, and an alternative account—the “virtue manifestation” account—is proposed in its place. This account has a (...) certain kinship with the epistemological approach that is known as “reliabilism”, but it also has certain key differences—above all, it is compatible with an internalist view of rationality. (shrink)

Slurs denigrate individuals qua members of certain groups, such as race or sexual orientation. Most theorists hold that each slur has a neutral counterpart, i.e., a term that references the slur's target group without denigrating them. According to a widely accepted view, which I call ‘Neutral Counterpart Theory’, the truth-conditional content of a slur is identical to the truth-conditional content of its neutral counterpart. My aim is to challenge this view. I argue that the view fails with respect to slurs (...) that encode truth-conditional content which does more than merely classify someone as a member of the target group, as well as slurs that denigrate by virtue of their iconicity. (shrink)

Intuitively, it seems that some belief-forming practices have the following three properties: 1. They are rational practices, and the beliefs that we form by means of these practices are themselves rational or justified beliefs. 2. Even if in most cases these practices reliably lead to correct beliefs (i.e., beliefs in true propositions), they are not infallible: it is possible for beliefs that are formed by means of these practices to be incorrect (i.e., to be beliefs in false propositions). 3. The (...) rationality of these practices is basic or primitive. That is, the rationality of these practices is not due simply to the availability, by means of some process of reasoning that relies purely on other practices, of a rational or justified belief in the reliability of these practices. -/- How can there be such practices? This paper offers an answer to that question. (shrink)

Both these ideas are intuitively plausible: rationality has an external aim, such as forming a true belief or good decision; and the rationality of a belief or decision is determined purely by facts about the thinker’s internal mental states. Unlike earlier conceptions, the conception of rationality presented here explains why these ideas are both true. Rational beliefs and decisions, it is argued, are those that are formed through the thinker’s following ‘rules of rationality’. Some rules count as rules of rationality (...) because it is rational to believe---through following other rules---that those rules are reliable. But there must also be certain basic rules, which are a priori, or ‘built into’ our basic cognitive capacities. That these rules are a priori is a purely internal matter; and in following these rules the thinker has done all that could reasonably be expected to achieve the external aim of forming a true belief or good decision. (shrink)

Over the last decade, research on derogatory communication has focused on ordinary speech contexts and the use of conventional pejoratives, like slurs. However, the use of social media has given rise to a new type of derogatory behavior that theorists have yet to address: internet trolling. Trolls make online utterances aiming to frustrate and offend other internet users. Their ultimate goal is amusement derived from observing a good faith interlocutor engage with their provocative posts. The basis for condemning a pejorative (...) utterance is often taken to be the harm it causes or a defective attitude in the speaker. However, trolling complicates this picture, since trolling utterances are by definition insincere and should be recognizable as such to other trolls. Further, these utterances seem morally questionable even when they cause little to no harm, and they often do not feature conventional pejoratives. I argue that while the potential for negative effects is relevant to ethical assessment, in general trolling is pro tanto wrong because the troll fails to accord others the proper respect that is their due. However, this characteristic wrong-making feature is sometimes overridden. (shrink)

Intuitively, a speaker who uses slurs to refer to people is doing something morally objectionable even if no one is measurably affected by their speech. Perhaps they are only talking to themselves, or they are speaking with bigots who are already as vicious as they can be. This paper distinguishes between slurring as an expressive act and slurring as the act of causing a psychological effect. It then develops an expression-focused ethical account in order to explain the intuition that slurring (...) involves an effect-independent moral wrong. The core idea is that the act of expressing a morally defective attitude is itselfpro tantomorally objectionable. Unlike theories that focus only on problematic effects, this view is able to shift the moral burden of proof away from victims of slurring acts and onto speakers. It also offers moral guidance with respect to metalinguistic and pedagogical utterances of slurs. (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument for a form of contextualism about ‘justified belief’, the argument being based on considerations concerning the nature of belief. It is then argued that this form of contextualism, although it is true, cannot help to answer the threat of scepticism. However, it can explain many other puzzling phenomena: it can give an account of the linguistic mechanisms that determine how the extension of ‘justified belief’ shifts with context; it can help to defuse some puzzles (...) regarding the closure of justified belief under competent deduction; and it can give a plausible account of the role that practical concerns play in the thinking of a rational believer, allowing for a more plausible kind of "intellectualism" about justified belief. (shrink)

In Book I of the Republic, or so I shall argue, Plato gives us a glimpse of sheer horror. In the character, beliefs, and desires of Thrasymachus, Plato aims to personify some of the most diabolical dangers that lurk in human nature. In this way, the role that Thrasymachus plays for Plato is akin to the role that for Hobbes is played by the bellum omnium contra omnes, the war of all against all, which would allegedly be the inevitable result (...) of a "state of nature", where human beings have no government to terrorize them into obedience. It is also akin to the role that for Kant is played by the "radical evil" that is allegedly an indelible feature of human nature itself. As I shall try to show, the desires that characterize Thrasymachus are of the kind that are described in Book IX as "lawless" desires, desire of the wild insane kind that dominate the tyrannical soul; and his beliefs systematically reflect these desires, in a way that has its own hideously coherent logic. (shrink)

This paper offers an argument in favour of the conclusion that it is seriously unjust to exclude same-sex couples from the institution of civil marriage. The argument is based on an interpretation of what the institution of marriage essentially is, and of its essential rationale; the crucial claim is that although marriage is a legal institution, it is also a social institution, involving a "social meaning" -- a body of common knowledge and expectations about marriage that is generally shared throughout (...) society. (shrink)

This is a reply to Mark Johnston's paper "The Authority of Affect", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2001).

According to the "recognitional" view of practical reason, rational practical reasoning consists in trying to figure out which of the available options are good things to do, and then choosing accordingly. According to the rival "constructivist" view, rational practical reasoning consists in complying with certain conditions of purely formal coherence or procedural rationality. Christine Korsgaard objects that recognitional views cannot answer the "normative question". But constructivist views are vulnerable to the same objection. One version of the recognitional view is immune (...) to this objection, and can also be defended against David Velleman's charge that it is empty and without content. (shrink)

According to normative judgment internalism (NJI), normative judgments -- that is, judgments of the form 'I ought to F' and the like -- are "essentially practical", in the sense that they are in some way essentially connected to practical reasoning, or to motivation for action. Many metaethicists believe that if NJI is true, then it would cast grave doubts on any robustly realist (RR) conception of normative judgments. These metaethicists are mistaken. This mistake about the relations between NJI and RR (...) seems to be due to hasty and undefended assumptions about the nature of belief. Any philosophical conception of belief that has the resources to deal with Frege's Puzzle (how to explain the apparent failures of referential transparency in belief ascriptions) will also have the resources to reconcile NJI and RR with respect to normative judgments. (shrink)

In her 1997 OSSA paper, Trudy Govier discusses in detail my thesis that arguers have dialectical obligations. In a 1998 paper she further examines this thesis to see whether it is viable and concludes that it faces serious problems. In this paper, I assess the state of the thesis in light of Govier's discussion of it. I urge that we have something to gain from the empirical turn--from investigating best practices. At the end, I take a step back to ask (...) what is really at issue here and how it connect s to other issues in the theory of argument. (shrink)

Many philosophres have attempted to argue from the "Humean Theory of Motivation" (HTM) and the "Internalism Requirement" (IR) to the "Humean Theory of Practical Reason" (HTPR). This argument is familiar, but it has rarely been stated with sufficient precision. In this paper, I shall give a precise statement of this argument. I shall then rely on this statement to show two things. First, the HTPR is false: it is incompatible with some extremely plausible assumptions about weakness of will or akrasia. (...) Second, this argument for the HTPR is invalid: even if the HTM and the IR are true, they do not provide any support whatsoever to the HTPR. (shrink)

The issue of the relationship between formal and informal logic depends strongly on how one understands these two designations. While there is very little disagreement about the nature of formal logic, the same is not true regarding informal logic, which is understood in various (often incompatible) ways by various thinkers. After reviewing some of the more prominent conceptions of informal logic, I will present my own, defend it and then show how informal logic, so understood, is complementary to formal logic.

Forty years of experimentation on class inclusion and its probabilistic relatives have led to inconsistent results and conclusions about human reasoning. Recent research on the conjunction "fallacy" recapitulates this history. In contrast to previous results, we found that a majority of participants adhere to class inclusion in the classic Linda problem. We outline a theoretical framework that attributes the contradictory results to differences in statistical sophistication and to differences in response mode-whether participants are asked for probability estimates or ranks-and propose (...) two precise cognitive algorithms for ranking probabilities. Our framework allows us to make novel predictions about when and why people adhere to class inclusion. Evidence obtained in several studies supports these predictions and demonstrates that the proposed ranking algorithms can account for about three-quarters of participants' inferences in the Linda problem. (shrink)

Philosopher Judith Butler has influenced how people talk about vulnerable bodies and sees vulnerability as universal, existential, and relational. Being vulnerable is part of the human condition. The main theoretical areas that run across Butler’s work; power, knowledge and subjectivity, performativity, and ethics—are of particular relevance to nursing practice. This review aims to explore how Butler’s theoretical work is reflected in research literature within a nursing context. We conducted a scoping review guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework. A systematic (...) literature search of CINAHL (EBSCOhost), MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), PsycINFO (Ovid), and Web of Science identified 15 papers. Butler’s theoretical work was applied at an individual and social level in research literature within a nursing context. Nurses need to reflect on their clinical practice and role as health professionals in relation to power and performativity in encounters with patients who are marginalized. Nurses’ working conditions, recognition, and understanding are strongly influenced by society, and calling nurses heroes undermines their capacity to challenge and resist the hero identity. The healthcare system’s impact on patient-nurse encounters challenges patients’ and nurses’ subjectivity, performativity, and power relations. The review allowed us to describe how Butler’s theoretical work can facilitate a reflection on nursing practice which is a prerequisite for caring, ethical relationships, and working conditions within a nursing context. Butler’s concepts can provide useful perspectives on how nurses understand, communicate with, and care for patients, as well as a nuanced understanding of the nursing role and power relations and structures. (shrink)

This paper is an exercise in intellectual history, an attempt to understand how a specific term—”informal logic”— came to be interpreted in so many different ways. I trace the emergence and development of “informal logic” to help explain the many different meanings, how they emerged and how they are related. This paper is also, to some degree, an account of a movement that developed outside the mainstream of philosophy, whose origins lie in a desire to make logic useful (echoing Dewey).

Many argumentation theorists have adopted the view that argumentation may be approached from three different perspectives: the logical, the dialectical and the rhetorical—which I refer to as the Triumvirate.). According to Wenzel, the conceptual foundation for this Triumvirate is the distinction between argumentation as product, as process and as procedure. In this paper, I want to raise questions about the Triumvirate View and the Tripartite Distinction on which it is based.

Max Hallman has put forward an interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy according to which Nietzsche is a prototypical deep ecologist. In reply, I dispute Hallman’s main interpretive claim as well as its ethical and exegetical corollaries. I hold that Nietzsche is not a “biospheric egalitarian,” but rather an aristocratically individualistic “high humanist.” A consistently naturalistic transcendentalist, Nietzsche does submit a critique of modernity’s Christian-inflected anthropocentrism (pace Hallman), and yet—in his later work—he endorses exploitation in the quest for nobility (contra Hallman). I (...) conclude thatecophilosophers need to exercise hermeneutical caution in any attempt to appropriate Nietzsche for environmentally ethical designs, lest they illegitimately ventriloquize their own moral voices into an authoritative but alien mouthpiece. (shrink)