The image of a ball rolling along a series of hills and valleys is an effective heuristic by which to communicate stability concepts in ecology. However, the dynamics of this landscape model have little to do with ecological systems. Other landscape representations, however, are possible. These include the particle on an energy landscape, the potential landscape, and the Lyapunov function landscape. I discuss the dynamics that these representations admit, and the application of each to ecological modeling and the analysis and (...) representation of stability. (shrink)

Recent work in argumentation theory has emphasized the nature of arguers and arguments along with various theoretical perspectives. Less attention has been given to the third feature of any argumentative situation - the audience. This book fills that gap by studying audience reception to argumentation and the problems that come to light as a result of this shift in focus. Christopher W. Tindale advances the tacit theories of several earlier thinkers by addressing the central problems connected with audience considerations (...) in argumentation, problems that earlier philosophical theories overlook or inadequately accommodate. The main tools employed in exploring the central issues are drawn from contemporary philosophical research on meaning, testimony, emotion and agency. These are then combined with some of the major insights of recent rhetorical work in argumentation to advance our understanding of audiences and suggest avenues for further research. (shrink)

Amartya Sen was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1998 'for his contributions in welfare economics'. Although his primary academic appointments have been mostly in economics, Sen is also an important and influential social theorist and philosopher. His work on social choice theory is seminal, and his writings on poverty, famine, and development, as well his contributions to moral and political philosophy, are important and influential. Sen's views about the nature and primacy of liberty also make him a (...) major contemporary liberal thinker. This volume of essays on aspects of Sen's work is aimed at a broad audience of readers interested in social theory, political philosophy, ethics, public policy, welfare economics, the theory of rational choice, poverty, and development. Written by a team of well-known experts, each chapter provides an overview of Sen's work in a particular area and a critical assessment of his contributions to the field. (shrink)

This important book is the first serious philosophical examination of the modern state. It inquires into the justification of this particular form of political society. It asks whether all states are 'nation-states', what are the alternative ways of organizing society, and which conditions make a state legitimate. The author concludes that, while states can be legitimate, they typically fail to have the powers that they claim. Many books analyze government and its functions but none focuses on the state as a (...) distinctive form of political organization or examines critically the claims states make for themselves. In filling this lacuna Christopher Morris has written a book that will command the attention of political philosophers, political scientists, legal theorists, and specialists in international relations. (shrink)

The current study used cross-modal oddball tasks to examine cardiac and behavioral responses to changing auditory and visual information. When instructed to press the same button for auditory and visual oddballs, auditory dominance was found with cross-modal presentation slowing down visual response times more than auditory response times (Experiment 1). When instructed to make separate responses to auditory and visual oddballs, visual dominance was found with cross-modal presentation decreasing auditory discrimination and participants also made more visual-based than auditory-based errors on (...) cross-modal trials (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 increased task demands while requiring a single button press and found evidence of auditory dominance, suggesting that it is unlikely that increased task demands can account for the reversal in Experiment 2. Auditory processing speed was the best predictor of auditory dominance, with auditory dominance being stronger in participants who were slower at processing the sounds, whereas, auditory and visual processing speed and baseline heart rate variability did not predict visual dominance. Examination of cardiac responses that were time-locked with stimulus onset showed cross-modal facilitation effects, with auditory and visual discrimination occurring earlier in the course of processing in the cross-modal condition than in the unimodal conditions. The current findings showing that response demand manipulations reversed modality dominance and that time-locked cardiac responses show cross-modal facilitation, not interference, suggest that auditory and visual dominance effects may both be occurring later in the course of processing, not from disrupted encoding. (shrink)

Can moral disagreements be rationally resolved? Can universal human rights be defended in face of moral disagreements? The problem of moral disagreement is one of the central problems in moral thinking. It also provides a stimulating stepping-stone to some of the perennial problems of philosophy, such as relativism, scepticism, and objectivity. _Moral Disagreements_ is the first anthology to bring together classic and contemporary readings on this key topic. Clearly divided into five parts; The Historical Debate; Voices from Anthropology; Challenges to (...) Moral Objectivity; Defenses of Moral Objectivity; and New Directions, the anthology presents readings from the following key thinkers: * Sextus, Empiricus, Chagnon, Wong, MacIntyre * Aquinas, Shweder, Brink, Rawls * Montaigne, Turner, Nussbaum, Narayan * Hume, Mackie, Gewirth * Nietzsche, Williams, Berlin. A distinctive feature of the anthology is that it brings philosophers into dialogue with well-known anthropologists. Also included is a comprehensive introduction by Christopher Gowans, introducing the problem of moral disagreement to those coming to the topic for the first time. (shrink)

Our lives are such that moral wrongdoing is sometimes inescapable for us. We have moral responsibilities to persons which may conflict and which it is wrong to violate even when they do conflict. Christopher W. Gowans argues that we must accept this conclusion if we are to make sense of our moral experience and the way in which persons are valuable to us. In defending this position, he critically examines the recent moral dilemmas debate. He maintains that what is (...) important in this debate is not whether there are irresolvable moral conflicts, but whether there are moral conflicts in which wrongdoing is unavoidable. Though it would be incoherent to conclude moral deliberation by deciding to perform incompatible actions, he argues that there is nothing incoherent in supposing that we have conflicting moral responsibilities. In this way, he shows that it is possible to capture the intuitions of those who have defended the idea of moral dilemmas while meeting the objections of those who have rejected this idea. Gowans carefully evaluates utilitarian and Kantian analyses of moral dilemmas. He argues that these approaches eliminate genuine moral conflict only by displacing persons as direct objects of moral concern. As an alternative, he develops a more concrete account in which moral responsibilities to persons are central. The book also includes discussions of Melville's Billy Budd, methodology in moral philosophy, moral pluralism, moral tragedy, and "dirty hands" in politics. (shrink)

I argue that the Buddha did not discuss the free will and determinism problem because he only considered issues relating to overcoming suffering and his teaching about this did not raise the problem. As represented in the Nikāyas, the heart of his teaching was an empirically based account of the causes of suffering and how to modify these to end suffering. It was primarily a practical teaching about how to achieve this goal, more a craft knowledge than a philosophical theory (...) of causality. Similarly, the no-self teaching was more about living selflessly than about developing a theoretical analysis of agency. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in combining the exegesis, hermeneutical issues and application of 1 Timothy 2:12 in ecclesial contexts where this prohibition is still taken seriously as a Pauline injunction or, at least, as part of the canon of the Church. It surveys representative proposals in New Testament studies of dealing with this least compromising assertion regarding the teaching of women in early Christianity. It discusses the hermeneutical issues involved in exegesis and application and how one should relate this (...) prohibition to other New Testament references to women and their role in the early Christian communities. In closing, the article discusses whether and how this assertion can still be relevant in contemporary contexts when and where women have a very different role in society and church. (shrink)

The paper investigates the `logical space of reasons' as a social space in which rational agents operate and persons in an important sense come to be. Building from an investigation of argumentative agents in Aristotle's Rhetoric, I discuss both interior and exterior criteria for personhood and propose that the latter shows how argumentation, as a principal activity of the space of reasons, results in the particular kinds of persons we recognize there as rational agents. The overall analysis is indebted to (...) Robert Brandom's centralizing of the practice of giving and receiving reasons and the suggestive ways this can be applied to the realm of argumentation. (shrink)

Plato’s engagement with rhetoric continues past the early and middle dialogues, like the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, contrary to the views of commentators. And that engagement recognizes a positive value to rhetoric as a necessary tool for leading people to justice. The paper explores rhetoric’s relation to Platonic dialectic through an examination of its role in late dialogues where the method of dialectic is most pronounced.

Buddhist thought flourished in India for well over a thousand years after the life of the Buddha around the fifth century BCE. During this time there were many diverse developments, but for the purpose of the overview in this chapter, two central traditions will be featured. The first centers on the original teaching of the Buddha as represented in a set of texts written in Pāli called the “Three Baskets”. The second tradition is rooted in a set of texts written (...) in Sanskrit called the “Perfection of Wisdom Sūtras” that began to emerge a few centuries later, around the beginning of the new millennium. These texts constitute the historical heart of Mahāyāna Buddhism. This chapter demonstrates that in both traditions Buddhist thought in India was fundamentally concerned with ethical values. (shrink)

One of the most noteworthy features of David Gauthier's rational choice, contractarian theory of morality is its appeal to self-interested rationality. This appeal, however, will undoubtedly be the source of much controversy and criticism. For while self-interestedness is characteristic of much human behavior, it is not characteristic of all such behavior, much less of that which is most admirable. Yet contractarian ethics appears to assume that humans are entirely self-interested. It is not usually thought a virtue of a theory that (...) its assumptions are literally false. What may be said on behalf of the contractarian? (shrink)

L. W. Sumner argues that humanism—the position that all and only humans possess moral standing—is false. I agree. Critically examining an argument purporting to establish the exclusive part of humanism—that only humans possess moral standing—Sumner argues that we should not confuse ultimate and objective value, value and welfare, and “formal” and “substantive” theses about value. Again I have no disagreement.

The essays in this volume illuminate a central topic in ethical theory: moral dilemmas. Some contemporary philosophers dispute the traditional view that a true moral dilemma -- a situation in which a person has two irreconcilable moral duties -- cannot exist. This collection provides the historical background to the ongoing debate with selections from Kant, Mill, Bradley, and Ross. The best recent work on the question is represented in essays by Donagan, Foot, Hare, Marcus, Nagel, van Fraassen, Williams, and others.

This innovative text reinvigorates argumentation studies by exploring the experience of argument across cultures, introducing an anthropological perspective into the domains of rhetoric, communication, and philosophy. The Anthropology of Argument fills an important gap in contemporary argumentation theory by shifting the focus away from the purely propositional element of arguments and onto how they emerge from the experiences of peoples with diverse backgrounds, demonstrating how argumentation can be understood as a means of expression and a gathering place of ideas and (...) styles. Confronting the limitations of the Western tradition of logic and searching out the argumentative roles of place, orality, myth, narrative, and audience, it examines the nature of multi-modal argumentation. Tindale analyzes the impacts of colonialism on the field and addresses both optimistic and cynical assessments of contextual difference. The results have implications for our understanding of contemporary argumentative discourse in areas marked by deep disagreement, like politics, law and social policy. The book will interest scholars and upper-level students in communication, philosophy, argumentation theory, anthropology, rhetoric, linguistics, and cultural studies. (shrink)

The human being is an imitative animal. This statement, or description, resonates across time and cultures. Its familiarity derives from its repetition. It has, in terms appropriate to this discussion, a memetic quality. What Aristotle says is that "imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns first by imitation". The proof for this, Aristotle goes on to explain, lies in (...) the pleasure derived from imitation. And if pleasurable, it is natural; we are naturally imitative creatures.Among our imitative practices is the social practice of argumentation with all its rhetorical... (shrink)

The New Rhetoric identifies the self-deliberator as one of three main types of audience. But such a turn toward the self is at odds with studies of contemporary argumentation, particularly social argumentation. Argumentation takes place “out there”, modifying the environments in which audiences operate. Equally interesting is the use of self-deliberation as a rhetorical strategy. Arguing with oneself, especially when that self is distanced in some way from the individual involved, employs self-deliberation beyond the ends that Perelman assigned to it. (...) In this paper, my goal is to explore the nature of the self-deliberator as an audience and self-deliberation as a rhetorical strategy employed in argumentation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The circumstances of the pandemic, while inviting lessons from earlier reclusions, prompt reflection on what is lost when we are forced apart. The moral sense, as Darwin reminds us, is founded in communal bonds, the very things now brought into question. How then are values—and the dispositions that inform them—being challenged by a rhetoric of care?

This overview discusses the nature of perceptual illusions with particular reference to the theory that illusions represent the operation of a sensory code for which there is no meaningful ground truth against which the illusory percepts can be compared, and therefore there are no illusions as such. This view corresponds to the Bayesian theory that “illusions” reflect unusual aspects of the core strategies of adapting to the natural world, again implying that illusions are simply an information processing characteristic. Instead, it (...) is argued that a more meaningful approach to the field that we call illusions is the Ebbinghaus approach of comparing the illusory percept with a ground truth that is directly verifiable as aberrant by the observer in the domain of the illusory phenomenology. This concept of direct verifiability not only provides an operational definition of “illusion”; it also makes their interactive observation more effective and informative as to the perceptual processes underlying the illusory appearance. An expanded version of Gregory’s categorization of types of illusion is developed, and a range of classic and more recent illusions that illustrate the differences between these philosophical viewpoints is considered in detail. Such cases make it clear that the discrepancies from the measurable image structure cannot be simply regarded as idiosyncrasies of sensory coding, but are categorical exemplars of perceptual illusions. The widespread existence of such illusory percepts is indicative of the evolutionary limits of adaptive sensory coding. (shrink)

While many studies of early Christianity mention translocal links as one of the significant characteristics of early Christian communities, these links have not been examined in detail. The present article provides a brief survey of research and discusses the significance of such links. It then examines in detail the evidence for such links in Paul's Letter to the Galatians. The article is the first examination of the direct and indirect translocal links in Galatians and of their function in the letter. (...) A final section draws out the implications of understanding early Christianity. (shrink)