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)

Spirituality emerges in the function of culture to reinforce and yet redirect our genetic heritage. Our genes urge us to be concerned only for our own welfare, which can turn us to evil behaviors. Our religious traditions urge us to engage in behaviors of transkin altruism. These religious traditions have been selected for in the processes of natural selection. The challenge to spirituality is to discern the fundamental dynamics of the evolutionary processes, both genetic and cultural, that have created us (...) and to direct our behaviors in ways that can be beneficial to the entire natural system. Reason is not enough; we must also cultivate spiritual discernment in order to perceive the true nature of our situation and the best responses that are called for. The religious communities have the major responsibility for cultivating the spirituality that can achieve the most adequate discernment. (shrink)

Studies on why small and medium enterprises engage in pro-environmental behavior suggest that managers’ environmental responsibility plays a relatively greater role than competitiveness and legitimacy-seeking. These categories of drivers are mostly considered independent of each other. Using survey data and comparative case studies of wine firms in South Africa, this study finds that managers’ environmental responsibility is indeed the key driver in a context where state regulation hardly plays any role in regulating dispersed, rural firms. However, especially proactive firms are (...) also characterized by expectations of competitiveness gains. The authors thus emphasize the role of institutional context and potential interaction effects between these drivers in explaining the reasons why SMEs engage in pro-environmental behavior in developing countries. (shrink)

One of the traditional ways in which we manage dissensus is by argumentation, which may be construed as the attempt of the proponent to persuade rationally the other party of the truth of some thesis. To achieve this, the arguer will often anticipate a possible objection. In this paper, I attempt to shed light on the normative aspect of the task of anticipating objections. I deal with such questions as: How is the arguer to anticipate objections? Which of the anticipated (...) objections are to be dealt with? What is required to deal successfully with an objection? (shrink)

One of the distinctive features of rhetorical approaches to the study of argumentation is the emphasis placed on the role of the audience. Here one thinks immediately of the influence of Chaïm Perelman and of his and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric. There is something importantly right about an audience-centered approach to argumentation. Clearly if you wish to persuade an audience of your position (or gain the acceptance of your thesis), you must engage that audience and in some sense carry (...) them with you from your starting points to your conclusion. Still, when I read theorists who place strong emphasis on the role of audience (for example, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric .. (shrink)

In Argument, Inference and Dialectic Pinto argues that critical practice can furnish us with the necessary guidance to answer our questions about argument and inference; we do not need to develop a theory of argument/inference. Pinto’s provocative remarks raise questions about the appeal to practice, and recall problems that Toulmin encounters in development of his innovative theory in The Uses of Argument. In this paper, I juxtapose and reflect on these developments.

The author's focus is on ethical issues relative to one area of professional practice - working with adult learners.

Twentieth-century Western philosophy divides untidily into two traditions, analytic and continental, and two figures stand tall at the forking of the ways—the philosophers Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl. However, the division is not reducible to this convenient alternative between two great contemporaries equally committed to the provision of firm foundations for the advancement of philosophy.

This paper argues, first, that the legal construction of transsexualism is a matter of interest, not only to members of the trans community, but to all students of gender, including feminists. The paper then proceeds to explain and analyse, using feminist perspectives, key aspects of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 in the light of the recent caselaw concerning the rights of trans persons. The 2004 Act, it is argued, is a conservative move, which attempts to deny the threat transsexualism poses (...) to the binary system of gender, by instigating a system to formally ‘recognise’ only men and or women. However, the way in which the Act constructs the public/private divide and the mind/body relation carries potential for legal recognition of subject positions which may in a variety of ways be ‘beyond’ the binary system that is currently orthodox. The paper can as such be read as a case study in the legal (re)construction of gender, the gender/sex relation, and the widespread tendency to construct gender conservatively. (shrink)

These essays bring Weber's sociology to bear on the current transformation of the political landscape. After the collapse of communism, many states are faced with the challenges of democratization: they need to establish their legitimacy in an uncertain economic climate and within a new geopolitical order. The essays in this volume develop Weberian concepts and apply his comparative-historical method to deepen our understanding of these problems. They cover a wide range of examples, from the United Stated to Western and Eastern (...) Europe, and from Russia and Japan to the Islamic States. (shrink)

Euboulos' 'αγκελων is represented by only four fragments , all culled from Athenaeus, which tell us nothing about the plot of the play or about the identity of its titular character. R. L. Hunter, in his recent commentary on Euboulos, discusses at length the name 'αγκελων and concludes that it could belong to either a humble and poor man; ‘a character from folklore notorious for sexual relations with his mother’ ; or ’ a wily slave such as those foreshadowed in (...) Aristophanes and familiar from New Comedy'. In view of our ignorance of the play's plot, each of these possibilities has an equal claim to our consideration. I believe, however, that the context in which the fragments are embedded in Athenaeus allows us to refine our understanding of the name even further. (shrink)

Although van der Velde's de Kamps's (vdV&dK) attempt to put syntactic processing into a broader context of combinatorial cognition is promising, their coverage of neuroscientific evidence is disappointing. Neither their case against binding by temporal coherence nor their arguments against recurrent neural networks are compelling. As an alternative, vdV&dK propose a blackboard model that is based on the assumption of special processors (e.g., lexical versus grammatical), but evidence from the cognitive neuroscience of language, which is, overall, less than supportive of (...) such special processors, is not considered. As a consequence, vdV&dK's may be a clever model of syntactic processing, but it remains unclear how much we can learn from it with regard to biologically based human language. (shrink)

One hundred years ago, Abraham Flexner pulled no punches. He tore the fabric of medical education in the existing medical schools and initiated a revolution that lives on to this day. Among the factors driving the 1910 Carnegie Foundation's Flexner Report was the recognition that "the requirements of medical education have enormously increased and the fundamental sciences upon which medicine depends have been greatly extended" (p. viii). This familiar mantra, enhanced by several log orders, resonates strongly in our own times. (...) Certainly another major factor—if not the predominant one—leading to the Flexner Report was the ineffectual medical educational process employed in most of the 155 commercial and private .. (shrink)

E-Z Reader achieves an impressive fit of empirical eye movement data by simulating core processes of reading in a computational approach that includes serial word processing, shifts of attention, and temporal overlap in the programming of saccades. However, when common assumptions for the time requirements of these processes are taken into account, severe constraints on the time line within which these elements can be combined become obvious. We argue that it appears difficult to accommodate these processes within a largely sequential (...) modeling framework such as E-Z Reader. (shrink)

That European and American philosophy at the opening of the twentieth century should have been sharply controversial was not an accident of politics, any more than it was accidental that persecutions and inquisitions should have attended the history of Christianity. The jealous God of Christianity was by definition an only god whose claims implies the rejection or subordination of every other god. Those who were not exclusively with him were counted against him. “ Christian “ and “ anti-Christian “ constituted (...) a complete disjunction. Similarly, the effect of the philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was to define sharp and conflicting antitheses. Its gods were jealous gods. Differences were irreconcilable oppositions, which could be overcome only through the conquest of one by another, or through their joint abdication in favour of a third party. But there are many signs of a changed temper of mind. The most recent philosophy seeks to escape such hostilities by avoiding the initial antitheses, or by bringing to light original communities and identities which have been lost sight of in the excessive sharpening of distinctions. (shrink)