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General Argument (general + argument)
Selected AbstractsUses of Value Judgments in Science: A General Argument, with Lessons from a Case Study of Feminist Research on DivorceHYPATIA, Issue 1 2004ELIZABETH ANDERSON The underdetermination argument establishes that scientists may use political values to guide inquiry, without providing criteria for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate guidance. This paper supplies such criteria. Analysis of the confused arguments against value-laden science reveals the fundamental criterion of illegitimate guidance: when value judgments operate to drive inquiry to a predetermined conclusion. A case study of feminist research on divorce reveals numerous legitimate ways that values can guide science without violating this standard. [source] Systematic methods, fossils, and relationships within Heteroptera (Insecta)CLADISTICS, Issue 3 2010Gerasimos Cassis Three recent papers dealing with phylogenetic relationships within the Heteroptera are discussed and analysed. A character set representing 43 taxa and 78 characters is used to test theories presented in those papers. The conclusions of Grimaldi and Engel concerning the placement of the Cretaceous fossil taxon Cretopiesma in the Piesmatidae are rejected in favour of placement in the Aradidae. The placement by Nel et al. of Protodoris from Eocene amber of the Paris Basin in the Thaumastocoridae is considered ambiguous because it has none of the diagnostic characters of that family group and is therefore regarded as incertae sedis. The arguments of Sweet concerning the elevation of the Aradoidea to infraordinal status on the basis of autapomorphies are also treated as invalid. General arguments against the use of phenetic methods in palaeontology, and ad hoc approaches under the guise of cladistics, are offered, with the conclusion that rigorous cladistic analyses are a prerequisite to testable conclusions concerning the placement of fossil and Recent taxa. ,© The Willi Hennig Society 2009. [source] ALL THIS HAPPENED, MORE OR LESS: WHAT A NOVELIST MADE OF THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN,HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2009ANN RIGNEY ABSTRACT Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) was a popular and critical success when it first appeared, and has had a notable impact on popular perceptions of "the bombing of Dresden," although it has been criticized by historians because of its inaccuracy. This article analyzes the novel's quirky, comic style and its generic mixture of science fiction and testimony, showing how Vonnegut consistently used ingenuous understatement as a way of imaginatively engaging his readers with the horrors of war. The article argues that the text's aesthetics are closer to those of graphic novels than of realist narratives and that, accordingly, we can understand its cultural impact only by approaching it as a highly artificial linguistic performance with present-day appeal and contemporary relevance, and not merely by measuring the degree to which it gives a full and accurate mimesis of past events. The article uses the case of Vonnegut to advance a more general argument that builds on recent work in cultural memory studies: in order to understand the role that literature plays in shaping our understanding of history, it needs to be analyzed in its own terms and not as a mere derivative of historiography according to a "one model fits all" approach. Furthermore, we need to shift the emphasis from products to processes by considering both artistic and historiographical practices as agents in the ongoing circulation across different cultural domains of stories about the past. Theoretical reflection should account for the fact that historiography and the various arts play distinct roles in this cultural dynamics, and while they compete with one another, they also converge, bounce off one another, influence one another, and continuously beg to be different. [source] States, Social Policies and Globalisations Arguing on the Right Terrain?IDS BULLETIN, Issue 4 2000Mick Moore Summaries The debate about future social policies in OECD countries is framed in the light of rich country concerns, notably of a ,welfare state at risk'. Because globalisation processes can plausibly be presented as a major source of threat, there is a temptation to generalise the analysis globally, and to assume that social policy issues in poor countries are fundamentally the same as in OECD states. The debate about the future of social policy in poor countries should not be framed in terms of OECD concerns. Three more specific points underpin this general argument: (a) Economic globalisation is not necessarily a threat. There are good historical reasons for believing that it may create political pressures to extend as well as to shrink social provision in poor countries; (b) There is a fundamental problem of state incapacity in much of the poor world that makes many OECD-based arguments about the proper role of the state appear redundant. Greater state capacity will itself lead to more effective social policies; and (c) It makes little sense for poor countries to resist, on grounds of potential adverse impacts on social policy, the trends toward the adoption of either New Public Management practices or the broader shift from ,positive' to regulatory states. Whatever changes occur in the architecture of poor states, more effective regulation will remain an urgent need. [source] Approximation by herglotz wave functionsMATHEMATICAL METHODS IN THE APPLIED SCIENCES, Issue 2 2004Norbert Weck By a general argument, it is shown that Herglotz wave functions are dense (with respect to the C,(,)-topology) in the space of all solutions to the reduced wave equation in ,. This is used to provide corresponding approximation results in global spaces (eg. in L2-Sobolev-spaces Hm(,)) and for boundary data. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The strong partition relation on ,1 revisitedMLQ- MATHEMATICAL LOGIC QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2004Steve Jackson Abstract We give a new proof of the strong partition relation on ,1, assuming the axiom of determinacy, which uses only a general argument not involving the complete analysis of a measure on ,1. (© 2003 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source] TEMPORARY INTRINSICS AND RELATIVIZATIONPACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2010M. ORESTE FIOCCO Some have concluded that the only appropriate response to the problem of temporary intrinsics is the view that familiar, concrete objects persist through time by perduring, that is, by having temporal parts. Many, including myself, believe this view of persistence is false, and so reject this conclusion. However, the most common attempts to resolve the problem and yet defend the view that familiar, concrete objects endure are self-defeating. This has heretofore gone unnoticed. I consider the most familiar such attempts, based on a strategy called tensing the copula, and present a general argument to demonstrate why this strategy , and any strategy based on relativization, fails. I then show how the considerations raised in this general argument undermine other attempts to resolve the problem while denying perdurance. All these attempts are undermined by an assumption essential to the problem of temporary intrinsics, to wit, that there are many moments of time and all have the same ontological status. As long as this assumption is maintained, the only solution to the problem is that familiar, concrete objects perdure. Thus, in order to defend the view that objects persist through time by enduring, one must adopt a different metaphysics of time (viz., presentism). I conclude that it is neither unreasonable nor impracticable to do so. [source] Pretense, Existence, and Fictional ObjectsPHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2007ANTHONY EVERETT There has recently been considerable interest in accounts of fiction which treat fictional characters as abstract objects. In this paper I argue against this view. More precisely I argue that such accounts are unable to accommodate our intuitions that fictional negative existentials such as "Raskolnikov doesn't exist" are true. I offer a general argument to this effect and then consider, but reject, some of the accounts of fictional negative existentials offered by abstract object theorists. I then note that some of the sort of data invoked by the abstract object theorist in fact cuts against her position. I conclude that we should not regard fictional characters as abstract objects but rather should adopt a make-believe theoretic account of fictional characters along the lines of those developed by Ken Walton and others. [source] Race, Region, and Representative BureaucracyPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 5 2009Jason A. Grissom Scholars of representative bureaucracy have long been interested in the linkage between passive representation in public agencies and the pursuit of specific policies designed to benefit minority groups. Research in this area suggests that the structural characteristics of those organizations, the external political environment, and the perceptions of individual bureaucrats each help to facilitate that relationship. Work to date has not, however, sufficiently investigated the impact of region on representation behavior, which is surprising given the emphasis that it receives in the broader literature on race and politics. Drawing on that literature, this study argues that, for black bureaucrats, region of residence is an important moderator of active representation because it helps to determine the salience of race as an issue and the degree of identification with racial group interests. It tests hypotheses related to that general argument in a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 public schools. The results suggest that black teachers produce greater benefits for black students in the South, relative to other regions. A supplementary analysis also confirms the theoretical supposition that race is a more salient issue for Southern black bureaucrats, when compared with their non-Southern counterparts. [source] The Struggle for a Place in the Sun: Rationalizing Foreign Language Study in the Twentieth CenturyMODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 1 2001James P. Lantolf Over the course of the past century, the MLJ was one of the sites where the vigorous, and often times passionate justification for, and defense of, foreign language (FL) study in the educational curriculum of the United States unfolded. Almost 10% of the slightly more than 4,000 articles published in the MLJ during the past century focused on the value and relevance of FL study in the educational enterprise. This article will focus on five major themes that surfaced throughout the 8 decades covered by our survey. The first theme comprises the general arguments offered by the profession in support of the value of FL study, most of which were impacted directly or indirectly by world events. The second and third themes document periods of general doubt and optimism about the place of FLs in the curriculum. In the fourth major theme, we describe the passionate and intense argumentation between the faculties of education and the defenders of FL study. The fifth, and final theme, addresses the question of which FLs should be taught in the schools and what contribution each might make to a student's education. As we enter the 21st century, it seems clear that the profession still feels compelled to justify the educational merit of its subject matter. In the end, given the twists and turns that history can take, it is difficult to predict whether FL study will eventually find an uncontested place in the sun. [source] Sweet nationalism in bitter days: a commercial representation of ZionismNATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 3 2009ANAT FIRST ABSTRACT. This article identifies several theoretical approaches to the role of culture in the construction of national identity. Embedded in the presently emerging approach, which emphasises the relations between popular culture/consumerism and national identity, this study focuses on a specific consumer good manufactured in Israel in the early 2000s, the height of the second Palestinian Intifada (uprising): small sugar packets bearing portraits of the patriarchs of Zionism. The analysis of this product, employing semiotic analysis, interviews and focus groups, locates it in the five ,moments' of du Gay's ,circuit of culture' (i.e. identity, representation, production, consumption and regulation). Three main general arguments were stated, empirically examined and largely sustained: (1) Consumer goods are used not only for constructing national identity but also as a means for ,healing' it; (2) in their ,healing' capacity, representations of nationalism on consumer goods do not add new elements to representations offered by the ,high' official version of nationalism but replicate them in a simplified way; (3) while trivialising the insights and concepts that originated in ,high' culture, consumer goods expose the prejudices, stereotypes and rules of inclusion and exclusion that in ,high' culture are often hidden in a sophisticated manner. [source] The Precautionary Principle in Patent Law: A View from CanadaTHE JOURNAL OF WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, Issue 6 2009Kiernan A. Murphy The precautionary principle (PP) has rapidly emerged as a staple of international environmental law and attempts have been made to extend it into other fields. This article examines whether the PP can or should be extended into patent law. First, an assessment of the general arguments in favour of extending the PP into patent law is performed, followed by an analysis of its applicability within Canadian patent law as it is currently enacted. Then, the arguments against a precautionary patent law are scrutinized. [source] | ||||||||||