Related Arguments Research Articles

(Un)consciousness-Raising, (Un)knowability, Lack and Spectrums of Solidarity: Discussion of “Unconsciousness-Raising”

ABSTRACT In this response, I address five selective arguments in relation to Malherbe’s thesis on the implication of the unconscious in the structuring of our political orientations and activities, and the importance of engaging in a process of unconsciousness-raising. First, I raise a seeming conceptual tension in his argument about the relationship between conscious and unconscious activity. Second, I highlight the challenge of occupying a range of subject positions and how their associated multiple unconscious lack(s) may compromise solidarity in political formations. Third, I suggest that surrendering individual unconscious needs to that of the group is a more troublesome process than we anticipate, as it is always ideologically contested, both consciously and unconsciously. Fourth, I argue that unconsciousness-raising is not in and of itself implicitly connected to a specific set of political goals, as the unconscious is not inherently politically partisan, and I consequently conclude with the suggestion that the very idea of solidarity is an unstable and dynamic construct and process.

A tale about facts and opinions: The impact of a drama intervention on middle-school students´ information literacy

Today, huge amounts of data are produced, collected, and presented in all kinds of contexts. The ability to critically examine and evaluate information and arguments in relation to empirical evidence is often referred to as information literacy. It is of utmost importance that students are adequately scaffolded to develop this ability, to be able to become democratic citizens. The study presented combines learning science and drama to explore whether this approach can make 6 grade students more aware of certain aspects of information literacy, such as false balance, the burden of proof, and filter bubbles. Half of the students watched a play and participated in a pedagogical follow-up before answering a questionnaire. The other half answered the questionnaire before the intervention. Results show that students watching the play had grasped the core of the more tangible questions, writing more elaborated and relevant answers than students in the control group.

The case for drones in counter-insurgency operations in West African Sahel

ABSTRACT The security situation in the Sahel region has been deteriorating with a consistent increase in violence. Despite tens of thousands of international troops in the region for over a decade, little headway has been made in establishing government control over the territory. The ongoing multilateral and large-scale military operations in the region have employed a boots-on-the-ground strategy that has been largely ineffective in stamping out the insurgency. The paper advocates for a recalibrated counter-insurgency strategy predicated on drones’ heightened and consistent deployment for counter-insurgency operations in the West African Sahel. This is in response to France's phased withdrawal from the region and the limited effectiveness of current multilateral military endeavours to quell the insurgency. The paper presents two related arguments hinged on the tactical utility of drones, drawing on the concept of ungoverned spaces as a theoretical foundation.

Technology‐mediated outdoor learning for primary school student teachers: Focusing on biodiversity

AbstractBackgroundTechnologies may successfully be used to mediate, aid, and diversify learning, but several studies indicate that technologies cannot substitute outdoor learning and its experiential nature. To halt human‐induced biodiversity loss, teachers should acquire a deep understanding of the principles of ecology, including the challenging concept of biodiversity. Only few studies have investigated learning about biodiversity outdoors guided by technology.ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to examine student teachers' current knowledge of the concept of biodiversity, to test how well technology‐mediated mobile learning in outdoor settings affects their understanding of the concept, and to determine the students' ability to estimate biodiversity in situ.MethodsStudent teachers (N = 121) participated in a technology‐mediated nature trail. Research data was gathered through open‐ended questions in pre‐ and post‐test questionnaires and an assignment during the trail. Data were analysed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.Results and ConclusionsResults showed that significantly, more students included species and ecosystem diversity in their definitions of biodiversity after the trail, but the inclusion of genetic diversity remained low. Student's estimations of biodiversity in situ and related arguments indicate that they had difficulties in connecting their observations with their assessments of biodiversity.ImplicationsThe study indicates that biodiversity is still a challenging concept, but also that outdoor learning mediated by technology has potential to untangle the concept. Understanding the importance of genetic diversity for species survival should be given special attention.

KMT-2021-BLG-2010Lb, KMT-2022-BLG-0371Lb, and KMT-2022-BLG-1013Lb: Three microlensing planets detected via partially covered signals

Aims. We inspect the four microlensing events KMT-2021-BLG-1968, KMT-2021-BLG-2010, KMT-2022-BLG-0371, and KMT-2022-BLG-1013, for which the light curves exhibit partially covered short-term central anomalies. We conduct detailed analyses of the events with the aim of revealing the nature of the anomalies. Methods. We tested various models that can explain the anomalies of the individual events, including the binary-lens (2L1S) and binary-source (1L2S) interpretations. Under the 2L1S interpretation, we thoroughly inspected the parameter space to determine the existence of degenerate solutions, and if they existed, we tested whether the degeneracy could be resolved. Results. We find that the anomalies in KMT-2021-BLG-2010 and KMT-2022-BLG-1013 are uniquely defined by planetary-lens interpretations with planet-to-host mass ratios of q ~ 2.8 × 10−3 and ~1.6 × 10−3, respectively. For KMT-2022-BLG-0371, a planetary solution with a mass ratio q ~ 4 × 10−4 is strongly favored over the other three degenerate 2L1S solutions with different mass ratios based on the χ2 and relative proper motion arguments, and a 1L2S solution is clearly ruled out. For KMT-2021-BLG-1968, on the other hand, we find that the anomaly can be explained either by a planetary or a binary-source interpretation, making it difficult to firmly identify the nature of the anomaly. From the Bayesian analyses of the identified planetary events, we estimate that the masses of the planet and host are (Mp/MJ, Mh/M⊙) = (1.07−0.68+1.15, 0.37−0.23+0.40), (0.26−0.11+0.13, 0.63−0.28+0.32), and (0.31−0.16+0.46, 0.18−0.10+0.28) for KMT-2021-BLG-2010L, KMT-2022-BLG-0371L, and KMT-2022-BLG-1013L, respectively.

‘He Offered a Prayer for the Flier He Had Just Killed’

Abstract The US Army war crimes trials held in Manila from 1945 to 1947 prosecuted around 200 Japanese military personnel for war crimes committed against US prisoners of war and Filipino non-combatants. Japanese defendants attempted to argue, with little success, that the defence of superior orders justified their actions. General Douglas MacArthur (Supreme Commander for the Allies in the Pacific or SCAP) was adamant that superior orders would not serve to excuse alleged Japanese war criminals from war crimes. What is clear from the trial documents and other archival material from Manila is that not all sections of the prosecution agreed with MacArthur’s interpretation of the law. However, it seems as though MacArthur’s pronouncement in relation to the application of superior orders may have had a profound impact on not only the Manila trials, but also with subsequent trials in World War II and beyond. This article explores the various arguments in relation to superior orders emanating from the US Army trials in Manila. The trials in Manila show that the rejection of superior orders as a defence in war crimes offered a reasonable foundation and precedent for how subsequent courts and tribunals evaluated the defence of superior orders within the context of war crimes jurisprudence.

BASE-GENERATED OR DERIVED? HERE'S HOW TO TELL STRUCTURES APART IN RUSSIAN.

The paper argues that the Scope Freezing Diagnostic (Antonyuk 2015; 2020) is an accurate test of relative argument relations and a reliable diagnostic for base-generated structures in Russian. An important novel finding reported here is that a vP-internal argument permutation, Argument Inversion, is mediated by Animacy, leading to the promotion of the lower [+Animate] argument to a position c-commanding its co-argument. Crucially, such permutations are shown here to result in an order that allows Focus projection, and one that is widely perceived to be discourse-neutral, hence routinely analyzed as underived. The diagnostic is argued to be a more accurate test of argument relations than other syntactic tests proposed in the literature, as well as a valuable diagnostic overall, one that has helped uncover Animacy as a pervasive and previously unrecognized confound on Information Structure and its complex interactions with argument structure in Russian. Theoretical and methodological implications of our findings are discussed.

The hydrodynamic limit for the inhomogeneous Vlasov–Navier–Stokes system

In this paper, we study the hydrodynamic limit for the fluid–particle model, which consists of the inhomogeneous incompressible Navier–Stokes equations coupled with the Vlasov equation through a drag force in a bounded domain of [Formula: see text] with a homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition on the fluid velocity field and Maxwell boundary condition on the kinetic distribution function. The proof relies on the relative entropy argument, which extends the work of El Ghani [Asymptotic analysis for a Vlasov–Navier–Stokes system in a bounded domain, J. Hyperbolic Differ. Equ. 7 (2010) 191–210] to inhomogeneous incompressible Navier–Stokes–Vlasov equations.

Those were the what? Contents of nostalgia, relative deprivation and radical right support

AbstractRecent research suggests that emotions are a central motivation for radical right voting. One emotion that has gained particular interest is nostalgia: Radical right politicians use nostalgic rhetoric, and feeling nostalgic is associated with radical right support. However, while nostalgia is widely and frequently experienced, previous work differentiates personal contents of nostalgia (e.g., childhood) from group‐based contents (e.g., traditions) and suggests that only the latter is related to the radical right. But why does nostalgia, and specifically its group‐based content, matter? In the present paper, I argue that nostalgia evokes implicit comparisons between the past and the present. Using relative deprivation theory, I posit that group‐based nostalgia makes people subjectively evaluate society's present as worse than its past. In turn, this temporal group‐based relative deprivation is associated with attempts to restore the past through radical right voting. Personal nostalgia, instead, does not evoke equivalent experiences of personal relative deprivation and is, therefore, unrelated to radical right support. In preregistered analyses of representative panel data from the Netherlands, I show that group‐based nostalgia is more consistently related to radical right support than personal nostalgia. In subsequent exploratory analyses, I test the relative deprivation argument and find that group‐based relative deprivation does indeed mediate the relationship between group‐based nostalgia and radical right voting: People who long for the group‐based past are more likely to feel dissatisfied with the government and, in turn, consider voting for the radical right. In studying this mechanism, I connect recent work on emotional and relative deprivation explanations to radical right voting.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Theistic Arguments from Horrendous Evils

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Theistic Arguments from Horrendous Evils

Denunciations of Sorcery as Demonic Possession in Old Russian Izmaragd

Old Russian scribes repeatedly tried to refute and devalue the abilities of the sorcerers in works of various genres. However, despite all attempts to instill in people a negative attitude towards sorcery, in the seventeenth century, both commoners and rulers turned for help to magicians, sorcerers, whisperers, astrologers, shamans, etc. at difficult times of their lives. A centuries-old tradition behind such appeals forced preachers to use various poetological and psychological methods of persuasion and suggestion. This article explores the rhetorical suggestive techniques and features of the argumentation system in homilies against sorcery, which are part of Izmaragd, an Old Russian collection of regulatory texts of stable composition. The author refers to The Homily of the Holy Fathers on Sorcery, a part of the 16th-century Izmaragd, and The Homily of St John Chrysostom on Those Who Are Cured of Illness by Sorcery, which is part of the Izmaragd. In 17th-century Izmaragd, The Homily of the Holy Fathers about Sorcery is part of The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery and does not exist separately as an independent text. Therefore, referring to these texts, one can trace how the original suggestive rhetorical devices and argumentation change. The study demonstrates that in comparison with The Homily of the Holy Fathers about Sorcery, The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery, uses a richer palette of rhetorical and psychological methods of influencing the audience. The communicative goal of convincing people to refuse to turn to sorcerers is achieved in different ways. Perhaps due to the brevity of the text itself, The Homily of the Holy Fathers on Sorcery employs simple traditional means, i. e. multiple repetitions and appeal to authority (indirect quotations). The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery employs a different, more subtle technology of speech hypnosis in the form of direct and contextual suggestions. In addition to the rhetorical devices typical of old Russian sermons (repetitions, rhetorical questions, exclamations, appeals, comparison, etc.), the text contains an extensive system of argumentation. Appeals to authority (in particular, its subtype – appeal to fame) combine with examples that are a model of behaviour and an anti-model, as well as with maxims of a different nature (intimidating, containing promises). The two Homilies demonstrate two completely different systems of speech impact on the audience. It is unnecessary to talk about the intentional transformation of original rhetorical suggestive devices and systems of argumentation in relation to these texts. Most likely, The Homily of the Holy Fathers about Sorcery inherits the oral tradition of delivering sermons and therefore is based on simple methods of suggestion easily perceived by the ear, and The Homily about Those Who Are Treated by Sorcery, conceived as a written text, was created based on old rhetorical schools.

Turbulence in Zeeman Measurements from Molecular Clouds

Magnetic fields (B fields) play an important role in molecular cloud fragmentation and star formation but are very difficult to detect. The temporal correlation between the field strength (B) and gas density (n) of an isolated cloud has been suggested as an indication of the dynamical importance of B fields relative to self-gravity. This temporal B–n relation is, however, unobservable. What can be observed using Zeeman measurements are the “spatial B–n relations” from the current plane of the sky. Nevertheless, the temporal B–n relation argument has still been widely used to interpret observations. Here we present the first numerical test of the legitimacy of this interpretation. From a simulation that can reproduce the observed Zeeman spatial B ∝ n 2/3 relation, we found that temporal B –n relations of individual cores bear no resemblance to the spatial B –n relations. This result inspired us to discover that the true mechanism behind the 2/3 index is random turbulence compression instead of symmetrical gravitational contraction.

An Analysis of Hadith Science and Interpretation; A Review on Volume one of Khair Ul-Mafatih Sharh Mishkwat Ul-Masabih

Islam is a complete code of life. There are five true sources that serve to derive Islamic law and jurisprudence to regulate the vital life chores of world. These Islamic sources include Quraan, Hadith, Ijtehad (Progressive reasoning), Ijma (consensus) and Qiyas (analogy). Among these Quran and Hadith find the supreme authority. Hadith further explains the sayings and acts of Hazrat Muhamad (peeace be upon him) that are greatly vital to address the various issues rising from various orientations of day to day life. Amidst all the fields of Hadith, the interpretation of Hadith is the most crucial. A great attention and care is exercised in this regard because it can either annihilate the real meaning or can comprehend it to its upright status. In this article, fully focused study is undertaken to explain the importance of Hadith science and its functions in human society. Examples from the text and related arguments have been presented to clear the understanding of the common reader.

Relational egalitarianism and moral unequals

Relational egalitarianism and moral unequals

How does Indian news media report smokeless tobacco control? A content analysis of the gutka ban enforcement.

Smokeless tobacco (SLT) products like gutka and paan masala are a growing public health crisis in India. Despite enacting a ban-the highest form of regulation-little is known about implementation progress. The purpose of this study was to look at how enforcement of gutka ban is covered in Indian news media and if media is a reliable source of data. We conducted a content analysis of online news reports (n = 192) from 2011 to 2019. News characteristics such as name and type of publication, language, location, slant and beat coverage, visuals, and administrative focus were quantified. Similarly, news contents were inductively coded to examine dominant themes and the implementation landscape. We found that coverage was initially low but increased after 2016. Overall, news reports were in favor of the ban. Five leading English newspapers covered the majority of the ban enforcement reports. Prominent themes like consumption, health hazards, tobacco control responses, impact on livelihoods, and illicit trade were drawn from the textual analysis as the main arguments in relation to the ban. Gutka is largely seen as an issue of crime reflected by the contents, sources, and frequent use of pictures depicting law enforcement. The interconnected distribution channels of the gutka industry hindered enforcement, highlighting the need to study the complexities of regional and local SLT supply chains.

Biomedical Argument Mining Based on Sequential Multi-Task Learning.

Biomedical argument mining aims to automatically identify and extract the argumentative structure in biomedical text. It helps to determine not only what positions people adopt, but also why they hold such opinions, which provides valuable insights into medical decision making. Generally, biomedical argument mining consists of three subtasks: argument component identification, argument component classification and relation identification. Current approaches employ conventional multi-task learning framework for jointly addressing the latter two subtasks, and achieve some success. However, explicit sequential dependency between these two subtasks is ignored, which is crucial for accurate biomedical argument mining. Moreover, relation identification is conducted solely based on the argument component pair without considering its potentially valuable context. Therefore, in this paper, a novel sequential multi-task learning approach is proposed for biomedical argument mining. Specifically, to model explicit sequential dependency between argument component classification and relation identification, an information transfer strategy is employed to capture the information of argument component type that is transferred to relation identification. Furthermore, graph convolutional network is employed to model dependency relation among the related argument component pairs. The proposed method has been evaluated on a benchmark dataset and the experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.

Political Plants

Abstract This essay considers a series of examples of contemporary and early twentieth-century artistic projects done in collaboration and conversation with plant scientists around the theme of plant sentience. In particular, it zooms in on the work of the Indian biophysicist Jadagish Chandra Bose and the Indian artist Gaganendranath Tagore in the 1920s and the Italian plant scientist Stephano Mancuso and German artist Carsten Höller in the 2020s. The essay has four interconnected aims. The first is to investigate how and why plant sentience is visually and spatially represented by artists. The second is to show through two broad examples how plant science can be and has been co-opted to serve different political, economic, and ideological positions. The third and broader aim of this essay is to counter a widespread ethical assertion in environmental humanities and animal studies that destabilizing human-nonhuman binaries intrinsically lends itself to projects of environmental justice by encouraging humans to coexist more equitably with other species. In other words, we should not assume that artistic production is spontaneously aligned to ethics of multispecies justice. The fourth and concluding aim is to make the related argument that plant sentience and other ways of knowing and relating across species need to be understood within the context of colonial and extractive histories.

Swaying Individuals’ Privacy Concerns via Amplifying versus Diminishing Counter Argument

Background: Though limited, research has found that individuals' privacy concerns could be swayed by counter argument. This study investigated the swaying influence of amplifying vs. diminishing argument (i.e., counter argument seeking to increase or decrease privacy concerns) on individuals’ privacy concerns and the moderating influences of level of sensitivity and privacy-related knowledge. Method: Data was collected using online survey and respondents were college students enrolled in a Midwestern university. 215 students participated in the survey, resulting in 180 completed responses; two factors (survey competition time and response consistency for reversely-coded items) were used to screen response quality and 90 responses were kept. Data was analyzed using univariate analysis. Results: Results suggest that the swaying influence of counter argument depends on the level of sensitivity—the swaying influence is greater when individuals are presented with amplifying (diminishing) argument for a highly (less) sensitive issue/scenario. In addition, although the swaying influence is smaller for those with high privacy knowledge in general, it is not necessarily easier to sway those with low privacy knowledge. Instead, those with low privacy knowledge are more likely to get stuck or trapped in their existing privacy beliefs when facing privacy argument inconsistent with their existing beliefs, and are more likely to be provoked or stirred up when facing argument reinforcing their existing beliefs. Conclusion: Findings suggest that when processing privacy argument, individuals show confirmation bias and tend to “go with their initial assessments”. This is especially true for those with low privacy knowledge. When facing privacy related argument, individuals with low privacy knowledge behave the opposite of how magnets work—while magnets’ opposite poles attract each other and similar poles repel, individuals with low privacy knowledge embrace argument consistent with their existing beliefs and repel/reject argument inconsistent with their existing beliefs.

Working Through the Politics of Indigeneity: Decolonising Psychology by Way of a Dialectical Approach

Our particular concern here is with how decolonising psychology is interpreted (or misinterpreted) as well as its implications for making our discipline a truly liberating enterprise. We make three related arguments here: first, colonialism was a joint project between the colonisers and the colonised instead of being a one-way imposition of the worldviews of just the colonisers. Second, the constellation of the values of the colonised societies (before their colonisation) that facilitated the fruition of colonialism continues to be a part of the culture of these societies even after their freedom from colonial rule. Third, a version of indigenous psychology that is based on simplistic binaries such as Indigenous vs Western, Local vs Global, or Self vs Other is bound to fail in achieving the goal of substantive decolonisation. Moreover, there is a politics of indigeneity too as Edward Said in his classic Orientalism (1978) has argued that the concept of the orient itself was a construction of the West for an ideological purpose. Therefore, it is ultimately argued that the project of true or substantive decolonisation can be accomplished only by attaining a proper understanding of self and culture and this goal can be achieved by collaborating with others. Further, the culture of a society may be viewed as a set of disparate, often contradictory values which help to keep a check on the excesses of certain cultural tendencies by offering an internal critique of it. This way of looking at culture calls for viewing it as a dynamic process and necessitates a dialectical approach to examine the nature of the relationship between contradictory values of a culture. In this effort, the methodology of critical cultural psychoanalysis helps us to recognise the dialectical relation between the conscious and the unconscious/repressed aspect of the culture of the societies of the coloniser and the colonised and work through them to expand their consciousness by recovering/owning the repressed/disavowed aspect of their self. Finally, it is argued that like colonisation, substantive decolonisation will also involve a collaborative process between the colonisers and the colonised whereby they can recognise and own their selves in entirety.

Asymptotic analysis for 1D compressible Navier–Stokes–Vlasov equations with local alignment force

We consider the initial-boundary value problem of compressible Navier–Stokes–Vlasov equations under a local alignment regime in a one-dimensional bounded domain. Based on the relative entropy method and compactness argument, we prove that a weak solution of the initial-boundary value problem converges to a strong solution of the limiting two-phase fluid system. This work extends in some sense the previous work of Choi and Jung [Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci. 31(11), 2213–2295 (2021)], which considered the diffusive term ∂ξξfɛ in the kinetic equation. Note that the diffusion term was not considered in this paper.