Foundation For Judgments Research Articles

Human Flourishing: The Grounds of Moral Judgment

Human Flourishing: The Grounds of Moral Judgment

“I can tell by the way you smell”

ABSTRACTAs a legacy of Kantian rationalism, smell occupies a minor place in most approaches to the sensorium. Yet nineteenth-century sanitary medicine understood odor to be a diagnostic tool for distinguishing health and disease. For English evangelical sanitarians, the trained nose made it possible to detect the unhealthy and sinful practices of individuals, families, cities and nations. Cultivating the sense of smell entailed the elaboration of a dietetics, at once a manner of feeding, a way of life and grounds for critical judgment. The concept dietetics supplements the use of the habitus in the sensory literature.

SACRED LAW RECONSIDERED

ABSTRACTPeople everywhere search for answers by using the resources of their traditions. They wish to do so in a legitimate way, and so they consult official institutions, specialists, and skilled individuals for their opinions; regardless of religious or cultural contexts, the common aim of these experts is to produce security, unity, and trust. Therefore, the norm‐finding processes in Islamic and Western contexts share fundamental similarities: the problem of finding a final ground for judgment, the strategies of constructing coherence and of organizing consensus, and the difficulties of obtaining legitimacy. What makes one debate “Islamic” and the other one “Western” is the different semantic materials, the different authorities, the different languages, and the different juridical frameworks. In my comparison of Muslim and Western discourses and practices, I conclude that Muslim and non‐Muslim scholars tend to overemphasize the uniqueness of Muslim legal and practical responses to bioethical challenges, because they restrict their purview to legal opinions, ignoring larger dynamics of legitimization.

소프트웨어 복제도 감정기법의 표준화 모델에 관한 연구

소프트웨어(SW) 복제도 감정의 목적은 두 프로그램 사이의 동일 또는 유사성 정도를 판단하는 것으로, 컴퓨터프로그림 저작권 관련 분쟁해결의 주요한 기술적 판단근거를 제시하는 제도라 할 수 있다. SW감정을 진행함에 있어서 중요한 점은 감정인의 주관적 판단에 편중되지 않도록 하고, 신속 객관적인 감정의 수행으로 정확한 감정결과를 도출해내는 것이다. 그러나 현재까지 체계적인 감정기법의 표준화 연구 및 개발은 미비한 상태이며, SW감정 분야별(유형별) 감정기법 조차 전문 감정인들에 따라 그 접근방법이 천차만별이어서 뚜렷한 표준안이 제시되지 못하고 있다. 또한, 기 수행되었던 감정사례에 대한 실증적 분석 결과, 기존 감정 절차 및 기법의 오류 또는 감정인의 전문지식 결여 등의 문제가 잠재하여 일부 감정결과에 대한 객관성 및 정확성에 손상이 있음을 알 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 감정인에 따라 동일한 평가 항목에 대하여 서로 다른 결과가 도출될 수 있는 오차의 허용치를 감소시키기 위한 객관적인 평가 방법과 정형화된 SW복제도 감정기법의 표준화 모델을 제시한다. 특히, 기존 감정기법의 문제점 해결 및 보완 연구를 기반으로 감정범위의 설정, 감정기준 및 방법, 단위작업 프로세스 기준의 감정영역 및 감정항목 설정, 가중치 부여, 논리적 복제도와 물리적 복제도 산출 등에 초점을 맞추어 감정기법을 분석 평가한다. 따라서 SW복제도 감정 기법의 표준화 모델은 감정인의 주관적 판단에 의한 오류의 가능성을 최소화하고, 감정결과의 객관성 및 신뢰성을 한층 제고하기 위한 도구를 제공할 것이다. The Purpose of Similarity(Reproduction) Degree Appraisal is to determine the equality or similarity between two programs and it is a system that presents the technical grounds of judgment which is necessary to support the resolution of software intellectual property rights through expert eyes. The most important things in proceeding software appraisal are not to make too much of expert's own subjective judgment and to acquire the accurate-appraisal results. However, up to now standard research and development for its systematic techniques are not properly made out and as different expert as each one could approach in a thousand different ways, even the techniques for software appraisal types have not exactly been presented yet. Moreover, in the analyzing results of all the appraisal cases finished before, through a practical way, we blow that there are some damages on objectivity and accuracy in some parts of the appraisal results owing to the problems of existing appraisal procedures and techniques or lack of expert's professional knowledge. In this paper we present the model for the standardization of software-similarity-appraisal techniques and objective-evaluation methods for decreasing a tolerance that could make different results according to each expert in the same-evaluation points. Especially, it analyzes and evaluates the techniques from various points of view concerning the standard appraisal process, setting a range of appraisal, setting appraisal domains and items in detail, based on unit processes, setting the weight of each object to be appraised, and the degree of logical and physical similarity, based on effective solutions to practical problems of existing appraisal techniques and their objective and quantitative standardization. Consequently, we believe that the model for the standardization of software-similarity-appraisal techniques will minimizes the possibility of mistakes due to an expert's subjective judgment as well as it will offer a tool for improving objectivity and reliability of the appraisal results.

Environmental Melodrama

Rhetorical scholarship criticizes melodrama for its tendency to simplify and reify public controversies and valorizes the comic frame as an ethically superior mode of rhetoric. These judgments are rooted in the discipline's reliance on Burkean categories, a reductionist conception of melodrama, and an implicit assumption that social unification should be the telos of rhetoric. In response, this essay advances a concept of melodrama as an integrated set of rhetorical appeals. It uses examples of environmental rhetoric to illustrate how the inventional resources of melodrama can transform public controversies and oppose dominant discourses that rationalize or obscure threats to the quality and existence of life on Earth. Based on these arguments, the essay endorses a sophistic critical perspective that foregrounds timeliness as the primary ground for rhetorical judgment and refuses to treat any rhetorical frame as inherently superior to another.

Ask the experts.

We would like to see clear eligibility criteria that are not open to challenge on Coughlan or Grogan judgement grounds. The tool itself should be simple with unambiguous language to avoid confusion with other assessments such as the Registered Nurse Contribution to Care determination (if it still exists then!). It is important that new criteria take account other funding mechanisms such as the Mental Health Act Section 28a, section 3, forensic sections 37/41. We need criteria that cover all client groups equally including those with learning disabilities and mental health issues, and all ages from 18 upwards.

La Parole incertaine: Montaigne en dialogue (review)

Reviewed by: La Parole incertaine: Montaigne en dialogue Sarah Hurlburt Philip Knee . La Parole incertaine: Montaigne en dialogue. Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 2003. Pp. 228. 22 €. Philip Knee sets his sights high in La Parole incertaine: Montaigne en dialogue. He seeks to specify the ethical and political scope of Montaigne's Essais while at the same time respecting their paradoxical style, rejecting evolutionary or contextual justifications. Moreover, in his conclusion he places the ethics of the Essais at the heart of the contemporary debate surrounding the origins of democratic thought in Western society. Knee's reading of the Essais is encyclopedic and rejects traditional topical boundaries such as friendship or death to focus on a more volatile target, Montaigne's exercise of judgment and the ethical consequence of this exercise. He follows this thread in its consistent practice rather than through its inconsistent conclusions, demonstrating over and over that the foundation of Montaigne's ethics lies not in any normative or dogmatic formula for interpreting a given situation, but in the act of judgment, in the active dialogue modeled by Montaigne and in which he invites his reader to partake as well. This conversation takes place between Montaigne and his reader, between Montaigne and the authors he so frequently reads and quotes, and finally (perhaps most importantly) between Montaigne and himself. The dialogue that takes place between Montaigne and himself is the act of the essai, the "trying," in which psychological experience, the search for knowledge and the relationship with the past provide the discursive terrain for what Knee calls the dédoublement at the heart of Montaigne's internal dialogue. This dédoublement is defined as the process through which Montaigne both judges the world and at the same time questions his perceptions of this same world, and therefore his foundation for judgment. The first chapter examines the nature and definition of Montaigne's judgment from multiple angles—custom, philosophy, ignorance, friendship and cruelty, narration and history, nature and art. Subsequent chapters place Montaigne in dialogue with a series of authors and explore in greater depth how Montaigne "exercises" his judgment in four domains: politics (Machiavelli), religion (Pascal), fiction (Rousseau) and identity (Diderot). Knee's goal in these chapters is not a reception study, however, despite the traditional pairings of Montaigne vs. Pascal, or Montaigne vs. Rousseau. He addresses each author's influence on or impressions of the other only secondarily. Rather, Machiavelli, Pascal, and Rousseau serve as a foil to Montaigne's ethical dialogue to the degree that each ultimately rejects the condition of uncertainty for all in favor of a dogmatic and even aristocratic vision of their respective topics. Only in the theatrical works of Diderot do the Essais find a corresponding vision of the necessary and perennial nature of uncertainty. Just as Montaigne's Essais have traditionally been read both as philosophy and as literature, so does Knee's book offer meat for both tables. His analysis of Montaigne's relationship to Socrates and to Machiavelli in particular offers keen insight, and his first chapter, "L'Exercice du jugement dans les Essais," can be read as a solid introduction to this fundamental theme in Montaigne's work. Sarah Hurlburt Whitman College Copyright © 2006 L'Esprit Créateur

AGENTS, ACTIONS AND REASONS

The idea that there is a branch of philosophy called ‘the philosophy of action’ can be dated roughly to the second half of the twentieth century. But while the label is new, the subject matter is not. At least since Socrates, philosophers have concerned themselves with the themes and problems now gathered under that label. In essence, the philosophy of action seeks to offer an account of the behaviour that characterises humans as ‘rational animals’, to use Aristotle’s phrase; behaviour that provides the grounds for judgements about people’s goals, characters and values, and on account of which they are held to be causally, and sometimes morally, responsible for certain outcomes and situations. Anscombe’s book Intention, which was strongly influenced by Aristotle’s and Wittgenstein’s views, is rightly regarded by many as the most important direct contribution to the philosophy of action in the twentieth century. Intention set the agenda for subsequent work in the area by replacing questions about free will and the voluntary, which had occupied philosophers for centuries, with questions about intention and the intentional; in particular, with the question: “What distinguishes actions which are intentional from those which are not?” (Intention, §5). Anscombe’s answer was that “they are actions to which a certain sense of the question ‘Why?’ is given application; the sense is of course that in which the answer, if positive, gives a reason for acting” (ibid.) Given this answer, the question about intentional actions, though not identical to, became synonymous with the question: ‘What distinguishes actions done for a reason from those that are not?’. In the process of clarifying both question and answer, Anscombe touched upon, or explored in some detail, most of the central issues in the theory of action; issues which might be gathered under three main headings: the nature of actions, the nature of reasons, and the relation between the two. In the years following the publication of Intention, and especially after the publication in 1963 of Davidson’s paper ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’, the theory of action concentrated mainly on

Book ReviewsChristian Illies, . The Grounds of Ethical Judgement: New Transcendental Arguments in Moral Philosophy.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. viii+214. $65.00 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews Christian Illies, . The Grounds of Ethical Judgement: New Transcendental Arguments in Moral Philosophy.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. viii+214. $65.00 (cloth).Michael HauskellerMichael HauskellerUniversity of Exeter Search for more articles by this author University of ExeterPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 114, Number 4July 2004Symposium on Terrorism, War, and Justice Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/382117 Views: 31Total views on this site Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The American Airlines Decision: Not with a Bang but a Whimper

The Department of Justice alleged American Airlines violated section 2 of the Sherman Act when it added substantial capacity to four routes after smaller rivals had entered. The case raised interesting issues relating to mechanism through which the capacity additions could have excluded competition and the proper cost-based test for assessing the legality of these capacity additions under Section 2. However, the court of appeals' narrow and pragmatic opinion affirming summary judgment for American had little to say about these issues and nothing to say about several alternative grounds for summary judgment cited by the district court.

C. S. Lewis and the Rejection of the Tao

When asking about the worldview and ethics behind such stories as The Chronicles of Narnia, readers should try to understand C.S. Lewis's work in light of the Tao or moral Natural Law. Even though our modern culture affirms a relativism in values, Lewis affirms a non‐relativist universal ground for moral judgment. Lewis's theological work, Mere Christianity, provides the clue for this interpretation. Despite the apparent negativity or violence in even some of the most memorable scenes in the Chronicles, the underlying moral is hopeful and positive, reflecting a ‘mere Christian’ worldview.

Violence and Translation

My writing on the events of September 11th is on two registers—the public event of spectacular destruction in New York and the private events made up of countless stories of grief, fear, and anticipation. 1 I hope I can speak responsibly to both, neither trivializing the suffering of the victims of the September 11 attack and those in mourning for them, as in the rhetoric of "deserved suffering" (as if nations and individuals were painlessly substitutable), nor obscuring the unspeakable suffering of wars and genocides in other parts of the world that framed these events. A recasting of these events into conflicting genealogies by the politics of mourning in the public sphere raises the issue of translation between different formulations through which these events were interpreted and, indeed, experienced. There are two opposed perspectives on cultural difference that we can discern today—one that emphasizes the antagonism of human cultures as in some version of the thesis on "clash of civilizations" and a second that underlines the production of identities through circulation and, hence, the blurring of boundaries. Both, however, are based on the assumption that human cultures are translatable. Indeed, without some power of self-translatability that makes it possible for one to imagine oneself using the categories of the other, human cultures would not be able to live on any register of the imaginary. The [End Page 105] [Begin Page 107] stark denial of this translatability on both sides of the present conflict concerns me most though I note that this is not to espouse a vision of justice that is somehow even-handed in distributing blame. My concern is of a different kind. I fear that classical concepts in anthropological and sociological theory provide scaffolding to this picture of untranslatability despite our commitment to the understanding of diversity. Obviously, there are specific issues at stake in this particular event of destruction, its time and its space, and the response casting it as a matter of war rather than, say, one concerning crime. But it seems to me that there is a deeper grammar at work here that invites us to investigate the conditions of possibility for this kind of declaration of war—as a genre of speech—to take place. One of the tenets of postmodern theorization is that the concrete and finite expressions of multiplicity cannot be referred back to a transcendental center—the grounds for judgment cannot be located in either the faculty of reason or in common corporeal experience. Although postmodern theory does not suggest that diversity must be valued for itself—indeed, it is part of the struggle of postmodern theory to provide for conversation and recognition of otherness without any predetermined criteria for the evaluation of divergent claims—it does raise important questions about the withdrawal of recognition to the other. I have suggested elsewhere that difference, when it is cast as non-criterial, becomes untranslatable precisely because it ceases to allow for a mutual future in language. 2 The shadowing of this into skepticism in which trust in categories is completely destroyed and our access to context is removed transforms forms of life into forms of death. Some such issue is at stake here in the Taliban's brutality against women on behalf of a pure Islam on the one hand, and a war waged on behalf of "Western civilization" on the other. After all it is the United States that spawned the very forces it is fighting as a defence against communism—the then enemy of freedom and values of Western democracy. 3 There are no innocent collectivities in the present war, despite the powerful deployment of the figure of the "innocent" killed on both sides of the divide. Elsewhere I have questioned the purity of the concepts that are put in play when claims are made on behalf of tradition, religious autonomy, modernity, or human rights. The translation of these concepts is not a matter of something external to culture but something internal to it. It is when a...

10.1023/A:1006034203352

Norms explained as grounds of practical judgment, using example of queue. Some norms informal, inexact, depend on common understanding (‘conventions’); some articulated in context of two-tier normative order: ‘rules’, explicit or implicit. Logical structure of rules displayed. Informal and formal normative order explained, ‘institutional facts’ depend on acts and events interpreted in the light of normative order. Practical force of rules differentiated; either ‘absolute application’ or ‘strict application’ or ‘discretionary application’, depending on second-tier empowerment. Discretion can be guided by values, principles standards. Pervasiveness of institutions and institutional facts, especially but not only in relation to institutions of state-law, including constitution and state-institutions. Searle's and Ruiter's theories of institution, institutional fact, considered: ‘constitutive rule’ rejected in favour of ‘underlying principle’, structure of ‘institutive, consequential and terminative’ rules explained and defended. Ruiter's conception of ‘institutional’regime' considered and adopted, validity of norms and normative 'regimes' considered and differentiated from truth of statements of institutional fact.

Bloom and His Critics: Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Aims of Education

The central questions raised by Allan Bloom's The Closing of theAmerican Mind are often overlooked. Among the most important ofBloom's themes is the impact of nihilism upon education. Bloom condemnsnihilism. Interestingly, we find among his critics two alternativejudgments. Richard Schacht, citing Nietzsche, asserts that nihilism,while fruitless in and of itself, is a necessary prerequisite tosomething higher. Harry Neumann, affirming the accuracy of nihilism,declares that both Bloom and Nietzsche reject nihilism out of ignoranceborn of weakness. All three philosophers understand that the purpose ofeducation emerges from one's position on nihilism. If nihilism is true,then it is senseless and cowardly to teach one's students that there aregrounds for moral judgments. On the other hand, if one believes thatthere is an objective higher and lower in moral matters, then one cannotat the same time consistently endorse nihilism or the atheism upon whichit rests. There is reason to believe that a consistent nihilism isimpossible and hence that the concept is bankrupt. But then something istrue, and there are grounds for moral judgment. Education must respondaccordingly. But even Bloom with his emphasis on the Great Books fallsshort of what is required. An education which aims to defeat nihilismmust, at the very least, hold out the promise that through thecultivation of reason one may indeed arrive at the truth.

The chief, the mine captain and the politician: legitimating power in northern Ghana

This article explores the strategies of acquiring and legitimating power in Ghana, taking the example of three ‘big men’ from the north, a paramount chief, a mine captain and a politician in the making. After offering some observations on the recent public debate on the (im)morality of power and ‘bigness’, it outlines the biographies of these three ‘big men’ and analyses how they skilfully combine different registers of power and legitimacy. It then analyses the strategies of legitimation and grounds of moral judgement which depend, at least to a certain degree, on the particular relationship of the ‘judge’ with the ‘big man’ in question. The article concludes by discussing the common ‘grammar’ that seems to regulate the debates on ‘bigness’, morality and interest.

Practical-theoritical argumentation

This essay explores the dialectics of theory and practice in terms of argumentation theory. Adapting Jonsen and Toulmin's (1988) notion of a Theory-Practice spectrum, it conceives Theory and Practice as extreme ends of a continuum and discourses as falling at various points along the continuum. Every theoritical discourse has essential practical aspects, and every practical discourse has essential theoretical aspects. Practices are theorized to varying degrees but every practice is thorized to some degree. Reflective discourse, which is discourse about practice, moves to and fro along the Theory-Practice continuum. Reflective discourse involves argumentation. Practical argumentation connects theory to practice; it appeals to general warrants, which may be simple or may tap into elaborate conceptual structures, in order to establish grounds for practical judgments. A practical discipline is a relatively coherent intellectual-professional enterprise that cultivates a field of social practice by engaging within itself and with practitioners in a reflective discourse. The argumentation of a practical discipline, like ordinary practical reflection, moves to and fro along the Theory-Practice continuum but in more methodical steps informed by systematic methodological reflection on the reflective process itself.

Wittgenstein and Rousseau on the context of justification

The historical aim of this paper is to reveal some striking similarities in Wittgenstein's treatment of epistemic justification and Rousseau's treatment of political justification. The theoretical aim is to open up the possibility of an understanding of justification which requires neither the discovery of some fundamental ground for judgment nor the alienation of the judge from the community or practice to be justified. Against the prevailing tradition in which justification occurs by reflectively rooting the practice in question in some unquestioned ground outside of and unaffected by that practice, a process which requires of the judge that her reason be untainted by practical involvements, both thinkers assert that justification can take place only within, being practically engaged with, whatever is to be justified. Indeed, we can go so far as to say for these thinkers that practical involvement is precisely the production of the grounds of legitimacy, and reasoned judgment is possible only from this engaged perspective.

“Feminine style” and political judgment in the rhetoric of Ann Richards

This essay argues for a revised perspective of the theory of “feminine style” developed by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell to explain the characteristics of historical feminist rhetorical action. Using a case study of contemporary feminine style in the political discourse of Texas Governor Ann Richards, the authors argue that the formal characteristics of feminine style, such as reliance on concrete reasoning, personal disclosure, and audience participation, can be viewed as integrally related to a philosophical position grounded in the uniqueness of women's experience. They conclude that the form and content of Richards’ rhetoric function to critique traditional grounds for political judgment and to offer an alternative political philosophy based in traditionally feminine values of care, nurturance, and affective relationships. These conclusions have relevance both for the study of feminist rhetoric and for the development of a critical rhetoric.

Public opinion and media coverage of labor unions

Public opinion about labor unions is influenced by a variety of factors, including media coverage. The type of media coverage unions receive provides a cognitive foundation for judgments about them and media coverage of unions has often been characterized as biased. This study examines media coverage of unions between 1946 and 1985 and shows that it became increasingly concentrated on strike activities and exaggerated the frequency of strikes. Moreover, strike-centered coverage has its strongest negative influence on individuals who lack ideological and group attachments to unions.

Religious grounds in liberal politics

I. Introduction Since this essay is drawn from the draft of a book entitled Private Consciences and Public Reasons,[1] putting the essay in context and explaining how it relates to criminal justice ethics may aid the reader to see its relevance. A number of theorists of liberal democracy have urged that officials, and perhaps citizens, should not rely on certain kinds of grounds for the making of political judgments and political arguments. In other words, some or all people should exercise a kind of self-restraint, declining to rely on grounds that might appropriately affect their actions in personal life. Some proposed principles of restraint are cast in terms of intuitive (as opposed to reasoned) grounds and in terms of comprehensive grounds (broad philosophies of life). Such principles include many, or all, religious grounds; and the history of religious conflict in Western Europe and the growth of toleration and liberal democracy out of that conflict inform all the principles. But these principles are not cast directly in terms of religious bases of judgment. Other principles are cast in this way, and in this essay, I address the idea that officials and citizens should refrain from relying on religious grounds in particular. The underlying claim is that such reliance is contrary to fundamental premises of religious liberty and of separation of church and state, or is particularly threatening to social life. The basic problem whether people should refrain from relying on religious grounds is one of political philosophy. Consideration of this problem might itself begin from some particular comprehensive view, such as Roman Catholicism or traditional Marxism; but my analysis here is meant to stand relatively free of competing religious premises and views about the good life. It does assume the validity of basic premises of liberal democracy, including most importantly religious liberty. Although what I say is not framed particularly in terms of acceptable premises for criminal laws, it does apply to those premises. Often the output of political deliberations is a prohibition supported by a criminal sanction: a law, say, against having a late abortion, engaging in homosexual acts, or hunting certain animals. Part of my inquiry is whether religious bases of judgment appropriately underlie such prohibitions. Many theorists treat liberal democracies as a general class, assuming that a principle of self-restraint good for one is good for all. Much of my book is directed at that assumption. I argue that much depends on the present composition of society and its values, illumined by history. In what follows here, I make remarks that reflect this claim, but I do not explicitly defend it. II. What Is Reliance on a Religious Ground Before exploring the arguments for a principle of self-restraint as to religion, I need first to explain what amounts to reliance on a religious ground. This involves brief comment on: religious grounds as opposed to other grounds; reliance at the time of decision as contrasted with mere causal influence; religious support for chains of common reason; and reliance on religious premises as compared with reliance on religiously influenced culture and religious symbols. A principle that one should not employ religious premises in political decision and argument would obviously cover the following excerpt from an imaginary speech given by a legislator, Leslie, against regulation of factory farming: The Book of Genesis clearly states that animals are for the benefit of human beings. Factory farming benefits human beings; God has told us that we need not worry about effects on animals. Even when a ground for judgment lacks explicit religious content, it can involve reliance on religion if a religious basis underlies it or motivates it. Thus, if someone opposing legally permitted suicide says, No one has a right to take his own life, this is a religious ground if the speaker believes the ground can only be supported by belief in God. …