Arguments In Debate Research Articles

Constraints to the Application of ICT Implants: The Concept of Self-Ownership

Those who refuse to accept the idea of ICT implanted in the human body argue that the main purpose of such technology will be surveillance and control and therefore will bring harm to people who are implanted. One can summarize this line of argumentation by claiming that ICT implants would vaporize privacy and diminish autonomy of the implant carrying person. Of course, at least in the western tradition of thinking, one can make a case that privacy and, particularly, individual autonomy are most important for the concept of a person. Therefore, so the argument goes on, autonomy and privacy must be protected and, conclusively, ICT implants must be forbidden. Yet, those you argue in favor of implants often say that in a liberal society people must be granted to deliberately decide on their own whether they would like to accept to be implanted. Of course, this a very rough summary and it does not represent the complexity of argumentation on both sides. However, in what follows it shall be presumed that both sides are wrong in conceptualizing surveillance and control. While the one side stress that surveillance and control are nothing but threats to autonomy and privacy, the other side even does not take into consideration that there is something like a society which can be negatively affected by individual decisions. In contrast to that, here it shall be presupposed that there are conditions and circumstances in which surveillance and control can be acceptable both from an individual and from a societal point of view. However, there will be no definition or list of situations in which surveillance and control are acceptable. Instead, the aim of this paper is to find some constraints to the application of ICT implants. Actually, one single constraint shall be discussed: The concept of self-ownership. Thus, the argumentation in this paper strongly emphasizes individual rights and opposes, for instance, utilitarian ideas. If one takes a look on the existing literature one will learn that self-ownership almost exclusively is discussed with respect to distribution of wealth and primary goods. That means that self-ownership is used as argument in debates on distributive justice. Predominantly, Robert Nozick employed this line of argumentation in his book “Anarchy, State and Utopia” published in 1974. He wrote that book in reaction to John Rawls’ hallmark book titled “A Theory of Justice” which was published three years earlier in 1971. Since these times, a quite controversial scholarly debate continuously is going on with regard to the question how a society must be shaped to be a just society. Thus, at first sight it seems that self-ownership is an inadequate start-ing point, for there are no strong ties connecting the concept of self-ownership on the one side and the application of ICT implants on the other side. But the debate concerning the just distribution of primary goods (see for this issue, for instance, Nock 1992) will not even be touched in the paper at hand.However, it is most obvious that the concept of self-ownership was deployed to strengthen individual autonomy and individual rights as constraints to state’s and society’s interference with a person’s course of life. In addition, it is most apparent that the use of ICT implants and the modification of one’s own body are already quite common with regard to medical applications. And since ICT implants will be perfect means for control and surveillance the question whether it is possible to find or define constraints is most important for individual autonomy, rights and the opportunity to choose one’s own way of life. Thus, the concept of self-ownership may be worthwhile to look at.

Printmedia poll reporting in Poland: Poll as news in Polish parliamentary campaigns, 1991–2007

Information about the support given by the public opinion to political actors has become a constant element of the public debate in Poland after the fall of Communism. Very soon polls became an argument in debates, a premise, or a way to justify decisions. At the same time they were criticized both by politicians and journalists convinced that polls can significantly influence the election results. But the fact was not noticed in Poland that all debates about the influence of polls on election outcomes should be preceded by a discussion of the way they are presented in the media. The present article joins this debate by subjecting to analysis the polls published in the Polish press during parliamentary campaigns in the dimensions of the role they played during the recent several years, the quality of methodological information, and of the way the polls were used in the media. As opposed to European and American analyses, no improvement in the conformity to standards of minimal disclosure in newspapers’ reporting of public opinion polls was noticed, although—like in other countries—a dramatic increase in the number of polls reported was observed.

The embryo research debate in Brazil: From the National Congress to the Federal Supreme Court

New forms of life produced by biomedical research, such as human embryonic stem cells (hESC), have been the object of public debate beyond the scientific fields involved. This article brings to light the case of Brazil, where recently passed federal legislation has authorized research with in vitro human embryos. It focuses on the legislative debate in the Brazilian National Congress between 2003 and 2005 on the Biosafety Bill of Law, which cleared for hESC research a certain share of supernumerary and unviable human embryos frozen in the country's assisted reproduction clinics. The passing of this Bill triggered other public reactions, chiefly a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality in Brazil's Federal Supreme Court. This study adopts an anthropological perspective for describing and analyzing the chief arguments in both debates, in terms of how the notion of 'life' was deployed and negotiated by contending parties. If, on the one hand, the definition of life appeared firmly attached to a conception of both the in vitro embryo and the fetus as a human person, on the other a movement towards breaking down life along utilitarian lines was found when the potential beneficiaries of stem cell therapy came into the equation. In all cases, however, notions of life were negotiated from a hybrid continuum of (biological) facts and (religious, moral and juridical) values, and resonated in different ways with the idea of the individual as privileged mode of constructing personhood in the context of modern nation states.

Econometric Estimates of Deterrence of the Death Penalty: Facts or Ideology?

In 2007, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that each execution saves more than 70 lives. This example is used to show how easy it is, using simple or advanced econometric techniques, to produce results that do or do not support the deterrence hypothesis. Moreover, we also point to some puzzles which have not been satisfactorily solved so far. We then present a critical survey of the papers published in the last ten years. It is shown how simple changes can produce quite different results using the same data. Finally, we draw some conclusions about the usefulness of statistical arguments in policy debates, but also on the moral questions involved in this particular debate.

Econometric Estimates of Deterrence of the Death Penalty: Facts or Ideology?

In 2007, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that each execution saves more than 70 lives. This example is used to show how easy it is, using simple or advanced econometric techniques, to produce results that do or do not support the deterrence hypothesis. Moreover, we also point to some puzzles which have not been satisfactorily solved so far. We then present a critical survey of the papers published in the last ten years. It is shown how simple changes can produce quite different results using the same data. Finally, we draw some conclusions about the usefulness of statistical arguments in policy debates, but also on the moral questions involved in this particular debate.

Is psychotherapy any good?

This document is intended as a resource to stimulate discussion around the validity and effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychodynamic assessment. It is written in an atmosphere of, to this writer, unhelpfully argumentative debate between 'scientific' (symptom and behaviour oriented) clinical psychology, and the more descriptive, relationship-oriented psychotherapies, in which the latter have been criticised as unscientific and lacking evidence for their practice (Surgenor 2006).

Knowledge, Ambivalence, and Congressional Approval

This paper explores which individuals are most susceptible to congressional approval. To this end, the paper is based on the information-processing logic of two moderators (knowledge and ambivalence) in the attitude change stages. Reception of validity-seeking messages is more likely to occur among individuals that possess a large store of political knowledge. However, in the acceptance stage, ambivalence mediates attitude change toward persuasive messages. These two moderators playa central role in a trade-off between two axioms (accuracy and efficiency) of decision-making in information processing. With the concept of the role of the two moderators in mind, I use the 2004 American National Election Studies data to examine four different groups' responses by combining two moderators (HKHA, HKLA, LKHA, and LKLA). The findings show that interpersonal heterogeneity is evident for four different groups. In particular, because they seek the contextual information and willingness to engage in cognitive differentiation as well as embrace central arguments in both parties' debate. publics with high knowledge and high ambivalence are less likely to rely on simple heuristic cues but more likely to depend on institution-specific criteria in evaluating congressional performance.

Representing the Problem of Abortion: Language and the Policy Making Process in the Abortion Law Reform Project in Victoria, 2008

In this article I enquire into the way that abortion was represented in the abortion law reform project in Victoria 2008. I have applied Carol Bacchi's model for policy analysis, the 'what's the problem represented to be?' approach, to identify the dominant framing of abortion in the Second Reading of the Abortion Law Reform Bill in the Victorian Legislative Council. Bacchi's model draws upon the larger interpretivist tradition that, in my view, offers the best means for analysing language, the role of power, and how we use it to construct the social world in which we live and win argument in policy and political debates.1 I argue that the enactment of the Abortion Law Reform Bill was made possible by the dominant representation of abortion as a law reform problem, and that this framing was successful because Members of the Legislative Council (MLCs), while being unable to agree on a moral definition, were able to find commonalities in their legal definition of abortion and reach agreement.

Can Liberalism Lose the Enlightenment?

John Rawls’s Political Liberalism asserts that liberal politics can and should be conducted without engaging debates about the truth of its theoretical foundations. This paper argues that political liberalism is in fact far more concerned with questions of truth than Rawls was willing to admit. Once political liberalism’s relation to truth claims is understood more clearly, it becomes evident that political liberalism is closer to its Enlightenment predecessor than Rawls claimed, and that affinity with the Enlightenment enables a reevaluation of political liberalism’s position on the place of religious argument in political debate.

SEC v Goldman Sachs and the new wave of (asset-backed) securities litigation. What are the arguments? What is at stake?

In the wake of the financial crisis a new wave of litigation looms. This paper presents an “aloof” analysis of legal arguments involved in securitisation cases. First, it identifies the relevant facts. Second, it focuses on key legal liability elements for fraudulent/negligent statements in securitisation litigation. In so doing, it identifies the aspects where public debate and legal argument differ, and where they concur; and it takes a broad view on the implications of tipping the balance one way or the other. It is concluded that the current wave of litigation has consequences for the long-term future of the financial industry.

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Social validation of collective annotations: Definition and experiment

AbstractPeople taking part in argumentative debates through collective annotations face a highly cognitive task when trying to estimate the group's global opinion. In order to reduce this effort, we propose in this paper to model such debates prior to evaluating their “social validation.” Computing the degree of global confirmation (or refutation) enables the identification of consensual (or controversial) debates. Readers as well as prominent information systems may thus benefit from this information. The accuracy of the social validation measure was tested through an online study conducted with 121 participants. We compared their human perception of consensus in argumentative debates with the results of the three proposed social validation algorithms. Their efficiency in synthesizing opinions was demonstrated by the fact that they achieved an accuracy of up to 84%.

Regionalisation, “virtual” spaces and “real” territories

PurposeThis paper seeks to examine evidence of new forms of regionalisation in both theory and practice, and the relationship between the two. In so doing, it aims to demonstrate the essential complementarity, rather than widely argued alternativeness, of both conventional and new forms of inter‐local collaboration at the regional level. The paper also seeks to demonstrate the importance of institutional and local legacies for the nature of regionalisation.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on interviews by the author with economic policy makers in several city regions in Europe and North America over the last three years, and the results of a series of workshops involving many of these very policy makers.FindingsThere is growing evidence of new forms of inter‐local region building being adopted by policy makers in response to a perceived need to maintain/improve economic competitiveness. Concerns about “giving away” powers and resources when engaging in usual conventional, formalised, fixed forms of regionalisation have created reluctance among many local actors to do so. The need to be more responsive to rapidly changing economic conditions, coupled to a realisation of the need for concerted action, have encouraged economic policy makers to adopt new, more experimental forms of region‐wide collaboration.Practical implicationsThe findings not only challenge established practices and a conventional focus on planning and technocratic views of “regions”, but also raise questions about the prevalent regulation theory‐inspired arguments in academic debate. Instead, “virtual regionalisation” seems to open new opportunities for defining meaning and operation of “regions” and “regionalism”, with the different backgrounds in Europe and North America allowing a somewhat more “open mind” in the latter than the former.Originality/valueThe paper illustrates that in many regions in Europe and North America there is now a multitude of actors and organisations seeking to promote regional competitiveness and growth.

Therapeutic Cloning and Reproductive Liberty

Concern for "reproductive liberty" suggests that decisions about embryos should normally be made by the persons who would be the genetic parents of the child that would be brought into existence if the embryo were brought to term. Therapeutic cloning would involve creating and destroying an embryo, which, if brought to term, would be the offspring of the genetic parents of the person undergoing therapy. I argue that central arguments in debates about parenthood and genetics therefore suggest that therapeutic cloning would be prima facie unethical unless it occurred with the consent of the parents of the person being cloned. Alternatively, if therapeutic cloning is thought to be legitimate, this undermines the case for some uses of reproductive cloning by implying that the genetic relation it establishes between clones and DNA donors does not carry the same moral weight as it does in cases of normal reproduction.

Connections and exchanges in European thematic cartography. The case of 19th century choropleth maps

In the beginning of the 19th century, thematic cartography was enriched with subjects related to the human world. In particular, the enthusiasm for statistics put on the foreground several topics drawn from what we would call today “social sciences”: demography, political economics, and moral statistics. In this context, most of the methods of quantitative mapping were invented within a short period, between 1826 and 1850. This article deals with the first and the most popular among these methods, the shaded map, which is credited to the Frenchman Charles Dupin. We explore the circumstances in which it was imagined, and its modes of diffusion in European cartography. Dupin’s shaded map became quickly famous and was imitated by scholars in the field of vital and moral statistics, then of medicine and anthropology. We suggest that these thematic maps were not neutral illustrations, but were primarily conceived as arguments in scientific or ideological debates, and that their sign system played a major role in their persuasive effect.

Secular Law and Inscrutable Faith: Religious Freedom, Freedom of Conscience, and the Law's Epistemology

Liberals in the Rawlsian tradition hold that the just society is one in which citizens enjoy an equal scheme of rights and liberties. In this paper I consider two apparent asymmetries of rights that arise under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: 1. The right to freedom of religion has been defined far more generously than the corollary right to freedom of conscience; 2. Religious arguments are blocked as justifications for law and policy, at least where rights are at stake, and this arguably limits the right of religious believers to participate as equals in the democratic process. I give a careful exposition for these asymmetries, and venture a justification for them. I argue that these two asymmetries both result from certain assumptions about the law's proper epistemic terrain. The law is in the business of pronouncing authoritatively about (e.g.) questions of what best promotes welfare. Conscientious beliefs which reflect calculations of welfare are grounded squarely on the law's epistemic terrain, and cannot be accorded 'reasonable accommodation' of the sort shown religious beliefs. By the same token, these presumptions about the law's epistemic terrain lead to the rejection of religious arguments in debates over (e.g.) same sex marriage, criminal obscenity laws, etc. Some argue that the law should be more inclusive toward religious arguments. On the basis of the foregoing discussion, I argue that such inclusivism may have radical and undesirable implications for the law's implicit epistemology.

The Shifting Balance of Power between Shareholders and the Board: News Corp's Exodus to Delaware and Other Antipodean Tales

NOTE: research in this Working Paper was subsequently published in the form of the following articles: (i) Jennifer G. Hill, Subverting Shareholder Rights: Lessons from News Corp's Migration to Delaware, 63 Vand. L. Rev. 1-51 (2010) (available at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1541644) (examining News Corp's shift in domicile from Australia to the United States as a case study, or natural experiment, to assess fundamental differences in traditional shareholder rights in the US, compared to other common law jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom and Australia. article also explores the lessons of News Corp's reincorporation for current US reforms increasing shareholder rights, and for the anti-reform claim that if shareholder empowerment were efficient, it would already have existed in the marketplace). (ii) Jennifer G. Hill, The Rising Tension Between Shareholder and Director Power in the Common Law World, 2010, 18 Corporate Governance: An International Review, pp. 344-359 (2010) special issue on Shareholder Activism (available at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1582258) (examining key arguments in the US shareholder empowerment debate, and the increasing tension between shareholder and director power in common law jurisdications). balance of power between shareholders and the board of directors is a contentious issue in current corporate law debate. It also lay at the heart of a controversy concerning the re-incorporation of News Corporation (News Corp) in Delaware. News Corp has recently been the subject of intense media attention due its successful bid to acquire Dow Jones & Company. Nonetheless, News Corp's move to the US, which paved the way for this victory, was neither smooth nor a fait accompli. Rather, the original 2004 re-incorporation proposal prompted a revolt by a number of institutional investors, on the basis that a move to Delaware would strengthen managerial power vis-a-vis shareholder power. institutional investors were particularly concerned about the effect of the re-incorporation on shareholder participatory rights, and the ability of the board of directors to adopt anti-takeover mechanisms, such as poison pills, which are not permissible under Australian law. It was this latter concern, which ultimately led a group of institutional investors to commence legal proceedings in the Delaware Chancery Court in UniSuper Ltd v News Corporation (2005 WL 3529317 (Del Ch)). News Corp re-incorporation saga highlights a number of important differences between US and Australian corporate law rules relating to shareholder rights, and provides a valuable comparative law counterpoint to the recent US shareholder empowerment debate. Other recent Australian commercial developments discussed in the article show a tension between legal rules designed to enhance shareholder power, and commercial practices designed to readjust power in favor of the board of directors. These developments are interesting because they demonstrate how some Australian companies have tried to create a de facto corporate governance regime, which mimics certain aspects of Delaware law.

Rhetorically self‐sufficient arguments in Western Australian parliamentary debates on Lesbian and Gay Law Reform

Western Australia's Acts Amendment (Lesbian and Gay Law Reform) Bill 2001 delivered a measure of legal equality in such areas as property transfer, superannuation, inheritance and discrimination, and more controversially, adoption, lesbian access to IVF, lowering the age of consent for sex between men from 21 to 16, and incorporating information on homosexuality into high school sex education classes. This paper examines the use of various moral principles within parliamentary speeches supporting or opposing the legislation, and the extent to which they were treated by members as beyond question, or 'rhetorically self-sufficient'. The resources of 'equality', 'human rights', 'democracy', 'the interests of the majority' and 'the interests of children' were given a kind of beyond-question, self-sufficient status, but their use was able to be undermined in a number of ways, relating to members' management of what the Bill was 'about', and the flexibility of these social constructs. It is argued that rather than pitting one set of resources against another, members on both sides of the debate faced a rhetorical pressure to adopt and mobilize all of the same self-sufficient moral resources, due to the flexible, constructed and non-hierarchical, yet often rhetorically self-sufficient nature of common-sense moral principles.

Facilitating argumentative knowledge construction with computer-supported collaboration scripts

Online discussions provide opportunities for learners to engage in argumentative debate, but learners rarely formulate well-grounded arguments or benefit individually from participating in online discussions. Learners often do not explicitly warrant their arguments and fail to construct counterarguments (incomplete formal argumentation structure), which is hypothesized to impede individual knowledge acquisition. Computer-supported scripts have been found to support learners during online discussions. Such scripts can support specific discourse activities, such as the construction of single arguments, by supporting learners in explicitly warranting their claims or in constructing specific argumentation sequences, e.g., argument-counterargument sequences, during online discussions. Partici- pation in argumentative discourse is seen to promote both knowledge on argumentation and domain-specific knowledge. However, there have been few empirical investigations regarding the extent to which computer-supported collaboration scripts can foster the formal quality of argumentation and thereby facilitate the individual acquisition of knowledge. One hundred and twenty (120) students of Educational Science participated in the study with a 2×2-factorial design (with vs. without script for the construction of single arguments and with vs. without script for the construction of argumentation sequences) and were randomly divided into groups of three. Results indicated that the collaboration scripts could improve the formal quality of single arguments and the formal quality of argumentation sequences in online discussions. Scripts also facilitated the acquisition of knowledge on argumentation, without affecting the acquisition of domain- specific knowledge.

A Texas Patriot on Trial in Mexico: José Antonio Navarro and the Texan Santa Fe Expedition

José Antonio Navarro is a familiar figure to historians of early nineteenth-century Mexico and especially to those concerned with the history of Texas. Born in San Antonio in 1795 and, of course, a Mexican, by the early 1830s he had married, produced a family, built a successful farming and mercantile business, and attained a prominent position in the local provincial elite. In favor of Anglo-American immigration into Texas and in contact with people like Stephen Austin, he supported the separation of Texas from the hated regime of Santa Anna. He signed the Texan Declaration of Independence and, after the de facto separation from Mexico in 1836 that was never accepted by the government in Mexico City, became “a model citizen of the Texas Republic” (p. xvii). In the next few years, he actively participated in the new republic, serving in 1838 in the congress convened at Houston.Then in 1841, against what seems to have been his own instincts, he was prevailed upon by President Mirabeau Lamar to join a Texas-sponsored expedition to New Mexico that was intended to strengthen commercial links but also to seek the incorporation of that Mexican territory into the Texas Republic. Navarro was captured by Mexican forces, taken to Mexico City for trial, and charged with treason before a military tribunal. He was sentenced to death, but the verdict was suspended and replaced with indefinite imprisonment. Transferred to the notoriously dangerous jail at San Juan de Ulúa, he escaped in 1845 and made his way back to Texas.Navarro’s story is reasonably well known, and many works have been published on his life and on the Santa Fe expedition. This new study, however, examines one aspect that, while not entirely new, has not been analyzed previously: his 1842 trial in Mexico City. These court records, found in the Beinecke Library at Yale, include the statements of witnesses, prosecution, and defense lawyers, reports and depositions by military officers, and diverse other bits of evidence placed before the military tribunal. Here these various documents are reproduced in the original Spanish and also in an English translation.While some of the documents are formal statements of little interest, others provide an unusual insight into the “conflicting loyalties and wrenching dilemmas” (p. xiii) faced by men such as Navarro, whose loyalties were torn between an emotional attachment to Mexico, the land of his birth, and a pragmatic acceptance of the reality of his situation when Texas won its independence. His defense statement or “confession” (pp. 53 – 61) in essence argues that he acted in self-preservation and that any other Mexican finding himself in a similar situation would have done the same. Another fundamental document is the closing argument of Navarro’s defense lawyer, Francisco Linaste (pp. 90 – 94). Citing Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belii ac Pacis (The Law of War and Peace) and other legal sources, Linaste makes the case that the bond between a state and the citizens of a region ceases to exist when the state no longer controls that region.Here is not the place to discuss such broad legal and moral precepts, but in a brief and admirable introduction, Reséndez provides a succinct analysis and summary of the issues involved for both sides in the trial. He also makes the fair point that even though Mexico’s judicial system at that time was famed for its bureaucratism and inefficiency, not to mention its venality, in this instance, the record shows that the legal processes afforded protection even to a presumed traitor like Navarro. More surprising perhaps is that the military tribunal had the courage to resist pressure from Santa Anna, who made no secret of his support for Navarro’s execution. Was Navarro a patriot, as Texans argued, or a traitor, as asserted by Mexicans? These documents do not provide a definitive answer, but they will provide argument for debate and move readers toward an understanding of Mexico’s always difficult history.