Argument For Claim Research Articles

Facts, norms and expected utility functions

In this article we explore an argumentative pattern that provides a normative justification for expected utility functions grounded on empirical evidence, showing how it worked in three different episodes of their development. The argument claims that we should prudentially maximize our expected utility since this is the criterion effectively applied by those who are considered wisest in making risky choices (be it gamblers or businessmen). Yet, to justify the adoption of this rule, it should be proven that this is empirically true: i.e. that a given function allows us to predict the choices of that particular class of agents. We show how expected utility functions were introduced and contested in accordance with this pattern in the 18th century and how it recurred in the 1950s when Allais made his case against the neo-Bernoullians.

IS PORNOGRAPHY “SPEECH”?

Is pornography within the coverage of the First Amendment? A familiar argument claims that it is not. This argument reasons that (1) the free speech principle protects the communication of ideas, which appeal to the reason (the major premise); (2) pornography communicates no ideas and appeals to the passions rather than the reason (the minor premise); (3) therefore pornography is not protected by the free speech principle. This argument has been specified in different ways by different writers. The most prominent and careful of these are Frederick Schauer and John Finnis. Both founder on the attempt to distinguish pornography from art, which both would protect. If art, film, and literature should be protected, then this protection should extend to the pornographic subsets of these genres.

Argument Strength, the Toulmin Model, and Ampliative Probability

We argue that Cohen’s concept of inductive or ampliative probability facilitates proper explication of sufficient strength for non-demonstrative arguments conforming to the Toulmin model. The data and claims of such arguments are singular statements. We may epistemically classify the warrants of such arguments as empirical (either physical or personal), institutional, or evaluative. Backing evidence and rebutting considerations vary with the epistemic type of warrant, but in each case the notion of ampliative probability for arguments with warrants of that type can be characterized. We may then use ampliative probability to define sufficient strength and related notions for Toulmin arguments.

I Agreed with What? Memory for Simple Argument Claims

Three experiments were conducted to examine how precisely readers recall the claims of arguments that they have just read. Participants read simple, 2-clause arguments such as, “The U.S. is right to intervene in other countries' affairs because local events can catastrophically impact the entire world.” Participants then evaluated each argument with respect to agreement or fit and recalled either the claim or the complete argument. The first 2 experiments found that readers have difficulty precisely recalling the main predicate of the claim (e.g., “should intervene” or “is right to intervene”) as accurately as they do the theme of the argument. Furthermore, a comparison with predicates of short narrative statements indicates that this recall difficulty is specific to argument predicates. Experiment 3 found that skilled readers' recall was more accurate than less-skilled readers. It also showed that the predicate recall problem occurred with both skilled and less-skilled readers and that it is related to one's ability to detect poorly formed arguments.

Towards a synthesis of theories of State failure

This paper examines the three main categories of State intervention. Before approaching the analysis of intervention, I attempt to shed light on the forming of social choices and the decisions of State rulers. I show how market process and property rights solve problems pertaining to social choice, which in turn stems from the application of the majority rule in a democratic society. Along these lines I view how the State fails to regulate externalities, stabilize the economy and redistribute income. For this purpose the following research applies the theory of property rights, the theory of rational expectations and the theory of public choice respectively to each of the above problems. The conclusion points to a synthesis of these theories, offering a highly demonstrative categorical framework of critique against State intervention. The argument claims that independent non-collective institutions work better than State intervention. (JEL: P16, D72, H23)

Power or Justice? Rule and Law in the Palestinian Authority

Rule of law is usually analyzed exclusively in reference to domestic peace within the political entity. Yet, establishing a powerful independent legal system can have a major impact on peaceful relations between political entities. This article evaluates the Palestinian Authority's performance in creating democratic and legal institutions from its inception in the summer of 1994 until the outbreak of the armed conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in September 2000. Three potential explanations drawn from the literature on state formation are evaluated in explaining the outcome: the foreign intervention thesis blames the failure on the asymmetry of power between Israel and the PLO; the domestic structural claim is that the weakness of the legal system stems from the unwillingness of the ruler to limit his power; and the cultural argument claims that only Anglo-Saxon and European states are truly liberal and democratic. The findings show that the quest for power led to centralization of authority in the executive, despite valiant attempts by politicians and civil society to avert such an outcome, and the article identifies the types of obstacles that need to be overcome to transform the Palestinian entity into a democratic reality that would promote peaceful coexistence with its neighbors.

From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity (review)

Reviewed by: From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity Caroline T. Schroeder Andrew T. Crislip From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005 Pp. x + 235. Accounts of ascetics miraculously curing the sick have captivated audiences both ancient and modern. Now Andrew Crislip turns our attention to a less scrutinized form of ascetic healing: institutional care for the ill. From Monastery to Hospital examines organized health care in late antiquity, arguing that the nearest antecedent to the hospital was the Christian monastery. Crislip meticulously combs Egyptian papyri and monastic texts (including some unpublished texts of Shenoute), Basil's Shorter and Longer Rules, Augustine's rules, and other sources for references to the infirm and their care. He interprets the evidence using social-scientific research models and methods, particularly sociological studies of sickness and hospitals. The book is infused with modern medical terminology such as "inpatient care," "outpatient care," "health care delivery," "providers," etc. Though this language may feel anachronistic, it works to support linguistically the broader argumentative claim that early monasteries conform to the same models of care as hospitals. Crislip's prose is clear and unadorned, geared toward presenting as much social-historical information as possible. Each chapter is divided into several layers of sections and subsections, a format which makes information easily accessible but contributes to a documentary feel to the volume. The first half of the book describes care for the sick in early monasteries, [End Page 122] contextualizing the material with a wealth of background information. There is a brief introduction to monasticism and the book's sources. The first chapter details specific medical practices in coenobia and lavra monasteries, including personnel and practical considerations (e.g., where to house the sick) and treatment procedures. Both types of monasteries provided outpatient care to sick ascetics in their cells. For more intensive inpatient care coenobia built infirmaries while lavra monasteries converted communal church buildings into sick rooms. Crislip convincingly demonstrates that many Egyptian monastics practiced traditional, Egyptian medicine. He also distinguishes between "nonmedical healing," which relies "exclusively on the perceived aid of a divine or quasi-divine agent," and medical treatment (21). Chapter 2 considers health care as a service which monasteries provided in their roles as "surrogate families." Since the ancient household was the traditional support network for the ill, the ascetic renunciation of family and property necessitated the development of an alternative system to care for sick monastics. The coenobium's typically large population led to the establishment of a separate building for the sick with its own routines, staff, supplies, and kitchen. This infirmary and its dedicated "nursing" staff were coenobitic monasticism's two greatest contributions to premodern health care. The second half of the book addresses the monastery's role in the historical development of institutional medicine. The use of sociological models is most illuminating in Chapter 3, which argues that a specific social role emerged for the ill. Crislip demonstrates that while Greco-Roman society typically shunned the sick, in monasteries the ill occupied an identifiable social position, known in sociology as the "sick role" (68–69). The sick role exempts the ill from traditional obligations (e.g., monastic work or diet) and imposes "a social obligation to get better" so that the sick can return to their former responsibilities. The ill are expected to seek "officially approved treatment," which in monasteries was strictly regulated since treatment involved privileges such as wine and extra food. As part of the sick role, unless ascetics suffered from a disease of demonic origin, they were not responsible for their disease or their recovery; healing came from care provided by the community, not personal prayer or sheer ascetic will. The final chapter investigates the origins of hospitals. Crislip outlines the services provided by the Basileias, a charitable institution founded by Basil of Caesarea, attached to a monastery and staffed by monastics. He identifies three fundamental characteristics of hospitals (inpatient care, professionally trained medical staff, and charitable care), all of which the Basileias possessed, making it the first hospital. Using the same criteria, Crislip evaluates...

Is Pornography 'Speech'?

Is pornography within the coverage of the First Amendment? A familiar argument claims that it is not. This argument reasons that (1) the free speech principle protects the communication of ideas, which appeal to the reason (the major premise); (2) pornography communicates no ideas and appeals to the passions rather than the reason (the minor premise); (3) therefore pornography is not protected by the free speech principle. This argument has been specified in different ways by different writers. The most prominent and careful of these are Frederick Schauer and John Finnis. Both founder on the attempt to distinguish pornography from art, which both would protect. If art, film, and literature should be protected, then this protection should extend to the pornographic subsets of these genres.

Management Practices, Work--Life Balance, and Productivity: A Review of Some Recent Evidence

Increasing product-market competition is believed to be a driving force behind higher productivity. However, even those critics of globalization who accept this argument claim that there is a hard trade-off because tougher competition comes at the price of reducing work—life balance (WLB). Optimists, by contrast, argue that competition can spur better WLB practices and therefore higher productivity, so there is a ‘win—win’ situation. To address this issue we use an innovative survey tool to collect the first international data on management practices and WLB practices, surveying 732 medium-sized manufacturing firms in the USA, France, Germany, and the UK. We find that the USA has the best management practices but the worst work—life balance. When we look within countries, however, we reject the pessimistic ‘trade-off’ model. First, WLB outcomes are significantly associated with better management, so that well-run firms are both more productive and offer better conditions for their employees. Second, tougher competition increases average management quality but does not negatively affect employees' working environment. As with many other studies, better WLB practices are associated with significantly higher productivity. This relationship disappears, however, after controlling for the overall quality of management.

Do Foreign Investors Punish Democracy? Theory and Empirics, 1984–2001

SUMMARYSome claim that when level of property rights protection is controlled, democracy lowers foreign direct investment (FDI) to developing countries (Li and Resnick 2003). We critically examine the theoretical claims of the pessimistic arguments and show that FDI responds to preferences of countries and that democracies have a clear preference for FDI given that the scarce factor – capital – will find it harder under democracy to seek rents by raising barriers to entry. On the other hand, labor (the abundant factor in developing countries) should profit from lower barriers to capital importation. We demonstrate conclusively that the most prominent pessimistic result on democracy in the literature is simply an artefact of sample size and testing procedure. We establish robust evidence suggesting that developing country democracies actually receive higher inflows of FDI, net of a number of control variables. Consistent with our view that host nations' attitudes are shaped by factor endowments, which in turn determine rent‐seeking, we demonstrate that governments controlled by ‘leftist’ political parties also receive more FDI than ‘centrist’ or ‘rightist’ governments among democracies. Why this should be true is not obvious from a theory based on property rights risk alone. An extended sample of LDCs and a better operationalization show that property rights and democracy positively affect FDI. Our results suggest that globalization advances the fortunes of democracies in the developing world.

Bad Arguments Against Gay Marriage

This article claims that three common arguments against gay marriage - the definitional, procreation, and slippery-slope arguments - are quite bad, the worst of the lot. The definitional argument asserts that marriage just is the union of one man and one woman, and that the definition alone is a sufficient defense against claims for gay marriage. The procreation argument claims that marriage's central public purpose is to encourage procreation, and so the exclusion of same-sex couples is justified. The slippery-slope argument claims that the acceptance of same-sex marriage logically entails the acceptance of other public policy changes - notably the acceptance of polygamy - that would themselves be bad, independent of whether gay marriage is bad. While each argument has some appeal, and each has adherents both inside and outside the legal academy, each is badly flawed as a matter of logic, experience, politics, or some combination of the three. The article suggests that in the interest of focusing on the most important concerns about gay marriage, commentators should move on to other arguments against it that seem stronger and thus better test the affirmative case for gay marriage.

From anti-doping to a ‘performance policy’ sport technology, being human, and doing ethics

This paper discusses three questions concerning the ethics of performance enhancement in sport. The first has to do with the improvement to policy and argues that there is a need for policy about doping to be re-constituted and to question the conceptual priority of ‘anti’ doping. It is argued that policy discussions about science in sport must recognise the broader context of sport technology and seek to develop a policy about ‘performance’, rather than ‘doping’. The second argues that a quantitative enhancement to a sporting performance has no value and is, thus, unethical, unless the motivation behind using it implies something meaningful about being human. Thus, unless the use of the technology is constitutive of our humanness, then it is not a justifiable method of altering (rather than enhancing) performance. This rules out the legitimacy of using performance enhancement to gain an advantage over other competitors, who do not have access to similar means. Finally, the third argument claims that sport ethics has had only a limited discourse and has failed to recognise broader theoretical ideas in relation to performance modification, which might be found in the philosophy of technology and bioethics. Collectively, these positions articulate important concerns about the role of science in sport and the ethical discussions arising from them.

The effect of goal instructions and need for cognition on interactive argumentation

This study examines the effect of goal instructions on students’ reasoning and argumentation in an interactive context (discussing a topic on-line). Goal instructions specify the goal of a discussion. General goals (to persuade or explore) were crossed with specific goals (to generate reasons or counterarguments/rebuttals) in a 3 × 3 randomized design using 224 undergraduates. The design also controlled for need for cognition, which measures dispositions to think. The goal instruction to “generate as many reasons as possible” resulted in deeper, more contingent arguments, closer to Mercer’s (1996) notion of exploratory talk, whereas the persuade goal resulted in arguments that were more adversarial and somewhat better supported. The other goals had less dramatic effects. Need for cognition also predicted total argument claims and depth. These findings have important implications for building richer interactive discussions that promote the integration of ideas.

Toward the Ethnography of Argumentation: A Response to Richard Andrews' ‘Models of Argumentation in Educational Discourse’

This paper is a response to Richard Andrews' ‘Models of argumentation in educational discourse’, particularly to his suggestion that argument studies should turn to ethnography to understand better how argumentation is taught, learned, and deployed. The response notes that Toulmin's model of argument (claim, data, warrant, etc.) and his theory of argumentation have called for such attention since the 1950s; however, the educational reception of the model (whether for instruction, assessment, or research) has largely ignored the sociocultural dimensions of Toulmin's work and treated the model as a generic heuristic. In fact, a great deal of work relevant to a new ethnography of argumentation has already been undertaken in a variety of sociocultural settings. This paper reviews examples of such studies and argues that they point to a pressing need to move beyond analysis of argumentative artifacts (whether texts, films, music, photographs, monuments, or whatever) to analysis of people's embodied, collaborative, and distributed activity in complexly laminated fields of practice.

Different Religions, Different Politics? Religion and Political Attitudes in Argentina and Chile

Various theories attempt to explain political outcomes. One of the most bitterly contested schools of explanation deals with culture, attitudes, and values. In the broadest sense, this tradition argues that political and social outcomes are determined in large part by the shared beliefs and values of the populace or a subgroup thereof. Thus, Stephen White (1984) has defined political culture as “historically formed beliefs and behavior,” recognizing that one's political attitudes and behavior are usually formed by inherited values as well as life experience. Moreover, scholars of political culture expect continuity of values over time and therefore are intrigued by cases of changing beliefs and attitudes. Thus, the explosive growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism in Latin America, where Protestants have grown from a handful to 20–30 percent of the population in a single generation, provides a unique opportunity for study. This rapid shift to Protestantism and its consequences for democracy have been fiercely debated in recent years. Max Weber's Protestant ethic thesis suggests that Protestantism may provide a catalyst for the establishment of democratic norms. However, many contemporary scholars argue that evangelical Protestantism is conservative, authoritarian, and politically passive. Do different religions result in different political attitudes? Does religious devotion, as distinguished from denomination, affect one's politics? This article evaluates political attitudes among Protestants and Catholics in Argentina and Chile to examine the claims of recent political culture arguments that modern Latin American Protestantism is resistant to democratic values. Survey data indicate that religious intensity (“devout‐ness”), rather than religious affiliation, does influence political attitudes, and that demographic and political engagement variables also influence democratic values.

The Phenomenology of Cognition Or What Is It Like to Think That P?

A number of philosophers endorse, without argument, the view that there's something it's like consciously to think that p, which is distinct from what it's like consciously to think that q. This thesis, if true, would have important consequences for philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In this paper I offer two arguments for it.The first argument claims it would be impossible introspectively to distinguish conscious thoughts with respect to their content if there weren't something it's like to think them. This argument is defended against several objections.The second argument uses what I call “minimal pair” experiences—sentences read without and with understanding—to induce in the reader an experience of the kind I claim exists. Further objections are considered and rebutted.

The deprivation argument against abortion.

The most plausible pro-life argument claims that abortion is seriously wrong because it deprives the foetus of something valuable. This paper examines two recent versions of this argument. Don Marquis's version takes the valuable thing to be a 'future like ours', a future containing valuable experiences and activities. Jim Stone's version takes the valuable thing to be a future containing conscious goods, which it is the foetus's biological nature to make itself have. I give three grounds for rejecting these arguments. First, they lead to unacceptable inequalities in the wrongness of killing. Second, they lead to counterintuitive results in a range of imaginary cases. Third, they ignore the role of psychological connectedness in determining the magnitude or seriousness of deprivation-based harms: because the foetus is only weakly psychologically connected to its own future, it cannot be seriously harmed by being deprived of that future.

Dispelling the Alphabet Effect

Canadian communication theory has accepted as one of its major tenets the superiority of Western civilization brought about by the phonetic alphabet. Challenges to the theory either have not been incorporated into the research literature or have been represented as working theories rather than conclusive evidence. This article seeks to help redress this imbalance by detailing the main claims of the alphabetic literacy arguments in the context of arguments advanced in several disciplines, suggesting that the alphabet effect theory should be dispelled. The article argues that a writing effect unites Western alphabetic and Eastern non-alphabetic cultures in a common heritage, and that historical periods of social advancement of the West and East have alternated in pendulum fashion. The article also introduces alternative views of the relationship between Eastern communication technologies, culture, and history to support the writing effect and pendulum model of the impact of communication technology in the East.

Universal and contextual tools as a double strategy in emergency planning

Emergency planning is normally focused on larger unexpected events. A basic planning tool is the risk and vulnerability analysis (RAV) based on a top-down rational planning process. In this paper, we discuss a concept of mini-risk analysis (MRA) as an additional strategy to cope with accidents and disasters in the local community. MRAs focus on daily risks and small incidents. The MRA argument claims that if the employees are accustomed to cope with daily incidents, this competence will enhance their capacity to mitigate disasters. Findings from two small Norwegian municipalities indicate that the MRA strategy is a complementary tool in emergency planning, taking care of aspects poorly dealt with in a top-down rational planning process like the RAVs. The main challenge is to combine the two approaches in emergency planning.

Faces in the Sky: The Anthropic Principle Design Argument

Of all of the arguments for the existence of God, perhaps the best known and best understood is the Argument from Design, or Teleological Argument. This venerable line of reasoning claims we can know there is a God because the natural world-and, in particular, the living world-is too complex to have come about by pure chance. Rather, so the argument claims, it must be the product of a designing intelligence, meaning, of course, God. The argument's area and era of greatest influence was Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Hick 1). The most commonly quoted expositor of the argument is the clergyman-naturalist William Paley, whose analogy between a watch and a living organism is among the best-known examples in the history of philosophy. To paraphrase Paley, if we find a rock in the wilderness, no explanation involving purpose is required. The rock could be of any size, shape, or composition. It can be explained entirely in terms of the natural laws of science. But if we find a watch, the matter is very different: only an explanation in terms of the intentions of a conscious entity will serve. The difference is in what Paley says we observe about the watch: that the various parts and structures of the watch are all designed and constructed so as to achieve the objective of keeping time. Now, adaptation of form to function is even more conspicuous in living organisms than in artifacts. So, the argument concludes, a Supreme Author of Nature must have designed living organisms with the intention of promoting their survival. This argument in its traditional form has lost much of its popularity because the discoveries of science have so often explained naturalistically what was formerly thought to require divine providence. Nor has the design argument fared well at the hands of philosophy in recent centuries. As is well known, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) criticized it keenly even before the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who complimented it while refuting it. It is therefore interesting to notice that the design argument in a new and revitalized form is alive and well in the intellectual life of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The Anthropic Principle Design Argument (APDA) has emerged in recent years as a new variation this theme. This time, the supposedly unexplainable phenomena are a large number of very general natural laws and constants, from the boiling point of water to the mass of the neutrino, which are said to be fine-tuned for the needs of living organisms. Natural laws and constants are claimed to be so precisely adapted for life that organisms could not exist if they were even very slightly different. For example, the physicist Paul Davies says, [There is] impressive evidence that life as we know it depends very sensitively the form of the laws of physics, and some seemingly fortuitous in the actual values that nature has chosen for various particle masses, force strengths, and so on (199). Davies, however, does not make so confident claims as some others do about establishing a Designer. These values, in other words, appear to be accidents in that they are not logically necessary consequences of more fundamental laws, and therefore are not derivable from them. In other words, these laws and constants could just as easily have been other than as they are. Therefore, the fact that they have precisely the values needed for life indicates that they were deliberately chosen-by God. I have previously criticized the APDA the grounds that it presupposes that the laws of the universe could have been different, while simultaneously assuming that they must remain the same (Fulmer, Fatal Flaw). Here, however, I argue that this new design argument is logically incoherent because its proponents repeatedly commit the logical fallacy of circularity. That is, they assume the desired conclusion of the argument as a premise to establish that very same conclusion. …