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Novel Argument (novel + argument)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Can We Derive the Principle of Compositionality (if We Deflate Understanding)?

DIALECTICA, Issue 2 2009
Antonio Rauti
Paul Horwich has claimed that we can derive a certain form of the principle of compositionality from a deflationary account of what it is to understand a complex expression. If this were the case, we would realize a surprising theoretical economy, and if the derivation involved basic ideas from a use theory of meaning, we would have a novel argument for use theories of meaning. Horwich does not offer a detailed derivation. In this paper I reconstruct a possible derivation and show that it begs the question. I then extend my discussion to explain why it is unlikely that alternative arguments can fare better. [source]

Bringing the Moral Economy back in , to the Study of 21st-Century Transnational Peasant Movements

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2005
MARC EDELMAN
James Scott's The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976) appeared at a time when "peasant studies" had begun to occupy an important place in the social sciences. The book's focus on Vietnam, as well as its novel argument about the causes of rural rebellion, attracted widespread attention and unleashed acerbic debates about peasants' "rationality" and the applicability of concepts from neoclassical economics to smallholding agriculturalists. In this article, I analyze E. P. Thompson's notion of "moral economy" and Scott's use of it to develop an experiential theory of exploitation. I then discuss other influences on Scott, including Karl Polanyi, A. V. Chayanov, and the Annales historians. "Moral economy" and "subsistence crisis" are concepts that Scott elaborated mainly in relation to village or national politics. In the final section of the article, I outline changes affecting peasantries in the globalization era and the continuing relevance of moral economic discourses in agriculturalists' transnational campaigns against the WTO. [source]

Fixed-Term Parliaments: Electing the Opposition

POLITICS, Issue 1 2010
Alan Hamlin
Constitutional reform requires a cautious approach that draws heavily on the theory of institutions. Too often arguments for particular constitutional arrangements are one-dimensional and limited in scope and imagination. This article illustrates this theme by discussing the debate over fixed- and variable-term parliaments, and by offering a somewhat novel argument that focuses on the role of the opposition within a parliamentary system. [source]

INDEFENSIBLE MIDDLE GROUND FOR LOCAL REDUCTIONISM ABOUT TESTIMONY

RATIO, Issue 2 2009
Axel Gelfert
Local reductionism purports to defend a middle ground in the debate about the epistemic status of testimony-based beliefs. It does so by acknowledging the practical ineliminability of testimony as a source of knowledge, while insisting that such an acknowledgment need not entail a default-acceptance view, according to which there exists an irreducible warrant for accepting testimony. The present paper argues that local reductionism is unsuccessful in its attempt to steer a middle path between reductionism and anti-reductionism about testimonial justification. In particular, it challenges local reductionism ,from within', without appealing to anti-reductionist intuitions. By offering novel arguments to the effect that local reductionism fails by its own standards, the present paper considerably strengthens the case against this version of reductionism. Local reductionism, it is argued, fails for three main reasons. First, it cannot account for the rationality of testimonial rejection in paradigmatic cases, even though the possibility of rational rejection is thought to be of central justificatory importance. Second, it does not provide a sufficiently distinct non-testimonial basis to which testimonial justification can be successfully reduced. Finally, local reductionism is shown to be an intrinsically unstable position, in danger of collapsing into full-fledged ,credulism' of the kind historically associated with Thomas Reid. [source]