Look For Arguments Research Articles

Republican Rhetoric as a Theory of Political Deliberation

Republicanism as a political language can be easily recognized by its tendency to stress emphatically key notions like virtue and patriotism as well as to argue in a highly appealing style. Hence republican rhetoric is the rhetorical analysis of this language. Through a critical analysis of republican texts it is possible to investigate the linguistic techniques the author is using to persuade the reader: which are his semantic efforts (like stressing certain notions) and what style belongs to a certain argumentation? This approach was already applied to key figures of the republican discourse such as Machiavelli, Harrington or Jefferson.1 It treats rhetoric as a universalistic concept related to republicanism as well as to all other political languages and also to the language of scientific argumentation.2 Even political theorists who officially rejected all rhetorical speech-acts as tools of manipulation were forced to use rhetorical instruments to let their argument look more plausible to the public (Hobbes, Kant).3 Rhetoric, however, is an ambiguous concept. George Kennedy divides all rhetoric into two kinds: primary and secondary. Dealing with rhetoric in the mentioned way of criticism is what George Kennedy calls secondary rhetoric.4 In this sense, secondary rhetoric is the discipline which prevailed from the ancient times through the Middle Ages and formed the core of the higher education at universities. Secondary rhetoric covers different aspects of communication theory like style, grammar, logic, poetics and pronunciation and includes both the linguistic analysis of spoken as well as written oratory. In these rhetoric teachings we can find initial points for modern criticism.

An Examined Life: A Response to James Kauffman's Reflections on the Field

It is difficult summarize a career like Jim Kauffman's in just a few paragraphs. And, although I won't even try do justice his contributions in the field of emotional and behavioral disorders, I do want say a couple of things at the outset. What Jim has done for us over the last several decades, even if many of us are not properly aware of it, is provide a space where we can do our work, secure our grants, train our teachers, and conduct our research without having fight battles every day defending the efficacy of what we do. Throughout his career, he has been consistently trying tell us something very important: that ideas and actions matter greatly the lives of the children we serve and that we had better be as sure as we can that what we propose do is based on the most reliable information we have at our disposal. That kind of information comes us through logical, objective inquiry, and we ignore it at our peril.Postmodernism is just the latest permutation in the long, muddled history of relativist flak that has bombarded us throughout the history of special education. Whether it was the ideological lunacy of arguments regarding the use of punishment, the decade-long rush toward The Delusion of Inclusion (Mock & Kauffman, in press), disingenuous arguments that impede prevention efforts (Kauffman, 1999a; Kauffman, in press b), or a hermeneutical philosophy that not only proposes false solutions but also prevents us from even seeing and formulating our problems (Kauffman, 2002; Kauffman, in press a), Jim has consistently stepped into the middle of it expose the folly of much of what has passed for educational expertise. Perhaps it is because he was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, absorbed the lessons of Mark Twain into his bones, and was thereafter constitutionally unable suffer fools gladly. Or, perhaps he has just seen things more clearly than many of the rest of us. Whatever the reason, we are indebted him for showing us that, as Tallis (1999) once stated, to pursue truth, one should not be too deeply entrenched in any hole (p. 93).Kauffman's Reflections on the Field neatly sums up our current struggle develop and maintain effective programs in a climate saturated with political solutions based on rhetoric and persuasion (Kauffman, 2003). His message is that those who seek the truth as closely as is humanly possible will not begin with conclusions and then look for arguments and facts support them. Rather, they will examine all relevant data in the hope of finally arriving at an accurate account of the needs of children and youth with emotional or behavioral disorders.When Jim warns us of new forms of racism packaged in progressive notions of democratic epistemology (Kauffman, 2003, p. 207), he gets the heart of the postmodern conflation of political and epistemic goals. That is, many of these otherwise seemingly bright people routinely commit the elementary logical mistake of confusing warrant with belief or truth with acceptance. As he has demonstrated in his recent work (Kauffman, 1999a,1999b, 2002), one of the reasons that this relativist sophistry has gained popularity is because too few of us who might have been expected resist the putsch understood what its instigators were saying. When applied special education, the result is a devaluation of empirically tested procedures, a perverted characterization of special education as a form of punishment, and a concomitant valorization of so-called full inclusion outcome variable status rather than, correctly, as a treatment option within the context of an array of possible treatments. When applied racial issues, postmodern multicultural dogma dissembles into an ardently advocated, veritably messianic political program, and, like most political programs that have succumbed the Utopian temptation, it does not take kindly true difference.Conceptual and Practical IssuesJim's comments regarding our field point toward a number of conceptual and practical issues that we must address immediately if we are continue meet the needs of our students. …

Unlocking the Second Antinomy: Kant and Wolff

Unlocking the Second Antinomy: Kant and Wolff Michael Radner But how in this business can metaphysics be reconciled with geometry, when it seems easier to mate griffins with horses than to unite transcendental philosophy with geometry?1 Kant, 1756 The second antinomy, treating the proof and refutation of bodies as composed of simple substances, is one of the more puzzling sections of the Critique of Pure Reason. The thesis argument especially baffles commentators. Edward Caird in 1889 said: “Kant’s statement of this argument is very obscure.” Among commentators of our era, T. E. Wilkerson complains: “This argument is very muddy.” Jonathan Bennett remarks: “The text, however, is not clear enough for us to be sure exactly what Kant is relying on in his argument for the Thesis.”2 Nor have commentators spared the antithesis argument. No one, to my knowledge, has interpreted the text so that the thesis and antithesis arguments come out valid and constitute a genuine antinomy. Yet Kant stated on more than one occasion that all the antinomy arguments are valid. The proofs “are not deceptions, but are well-founded, under the supposition that appearances or a sensible world which comprehends them all are things in themselves” (B535).3 In the Prolegomena [End Page 413] he writes: “The thesis, as well as the antithesis, can be shown by equally clear, evident, and irresistible proofs—for I pledge myself as to the correctness of all these proofs.”4 It would be pleasant to report that Kant, in the Second Antinomy, has uncovered a universal and timeless flaw in human understanding, involving general concepts of simple and composite things. After two centuries of Kant interpretation, I believe that we can safely conclude that, whatever the Second Antinomy proves, it does not demonstrate such a flaw. Hence I will take a different tack in this paper. The Second Antinomy arguments, in my view, maintain whatever cogency they have in the context of eighteenth-century metaphysics and mathematics.5 The arguments look much more respectable in that light. Further, the antinomy is not merely two separate arguments; there is no conflict unless both sets of premises—those of the thesis and those of the antithesis—are affirmed together. The setting where that happens is Kant’s own system, with the addition of the false presupposition that appearances are things in themselves. My aims in this paper are (a) to rehabilitate the arguments of Kant’s Second Antinomy through eighteenth-century substance philosophy, especially the philosophy of Christian Wolff, and the mathematics of the period; (b) to investigate how Kant’s system can support both the thesis and the antithesis; and (c) to consider how the antinomy supports transcendental idealism. 1. the substance philosophy framework Within the philosophy of the Early Modern period, there was only one highly developed metaphysics—that of substance and accident. Substances were the basic ontological units on which the existence of everything else depended. Every substance metaphysician accepted the fundamental principle that properties and relations cannot exist without being properties and relations of something. During this period there was no other metaphysical system able to compete with substance theories for supremacy in philosophy. Instead, some critics adopted a skeptical stance: they removed some or all of the substances from systems such as Cartesian metaphysics and tried to make do with the remaining components, principally ideas or representations in the mind. In the case of corporeal substances, the kind of interest in the Second Antinomy, the fixed characteristics (essence) assigned to the substances were [End Page 414] supposed to provide a foundation for scientific explanations of the behavior of bodies. As physical science evolved, so did the essences postulated by the philosophers. The bodies that we perceive have two sorts of characteristics which engage physical scientists. They take up space and they participate in causal processes. The Second Antinomy treats the problem of explaining the extension of bodies within a substance framework. The antinomy abstracts from questions involving forces and interactions of substances, as we will see. A detailed exposition of the various substance philosophies in the Early Modern Period and a thoroughgoing account of how substance fits into Kant’s transcendental idealism are beyond the scope...

Ronald Dworkin, Inside-Out

That is not a terribly precise vocabulary, but it seems to be capturing some of the anti-intellectual spirit in Sunstein's case against and no good interpreter should deny that Americans can be anti-intellectual. Political philosophy cannot coerce our consideredion, and no good interpreter should deny that Americans can be anti-intellectual. Political philosophy cannot coerce our considered convictions any more than the principles of logic can.... It is a mistake to think of abstract conceptions and general principles as always overriding our more particular judgments, Rawls writes. In other words, pre-reflective intuitions sometimes trump our reflective abstractions, and there is nothing necessarily wrong with this. But this is not a frontal assault on Dworkin. We ought not to damn him to neverions, and there is nothing necessarily wrong with this. But this is not a frontal assault on Dworkin. We ought not to damn him to never being believed, like some modem Cassandra, on account of his being too smart. It is, rather, a decision on the merits of a particular case, from within the method. Dworkin simply loses the round, perhaps because he is too clever by a half, at least for us mortals. He still ought to be invited to participate in the next round of discussions. None of this is an outside critique of Dworkin's method. We may subscribe to a perfectly sensible meta-principle of acting publicly and politically only on the basis of advice that we can understand, and then we would look for simpler arguments to follow. But these simpler arguments still must reasonably fit our past, and must be subject to the tests of whatever political theory we can understand. We might have to tell Dworkin that he will have to wait until we can catch up to him. But rather than, as Sunstein would have us, ascending to the lowest necessary level of abstraction, we are reaching to the highest level of abstraction that we can follow. We'll listen, that is, to anyone we can understand. Why wouldn't we? I do not, in fact, think that this reading of Dworkin as a real life Hercules is compelling. Dworkin is a very able legal philosopher to be sure, but he is also a clear and coherent one, and many of us at least think that we are able to follow him quite well. The charge also insults judges and other legal theorists. Many of Dworkin's arguments are based or build incrementally on the work of other lawyers. If, in the end, he is tricking us, he is doubly skilled, for he hides the deception so well. It would also be an extraordinarily odd claim to accuse Dworkin of malicious sophistry-as if an evil genius were out to deceive us, 98. Id. [Vol. 85:1043 1084

Artificial intelligence and women's knowledge What Can Feminist Epistemologies Tell Us?

Abstract Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the branch of computer science which seeks to model intelligent human behavior on a computer. In this paper the way in which symbolic AI is predicated on a traditional rationalist epistemology is described. Traditional criticisms of AI converge on the possibility of creating true artificial intelligence, whereas a feminist argument looks instead to the cultural setting of AI — whose knowledge and what type of knowledge is to be represented. Feminist epistemology can be used to support and to extend these arguments in two main directions, both of which have links to other philosophical or sociological traditions. The first direction focuses on the knowing subject and the second is concerned with the distinction between “knowing that” and “knowing how,” or the prepositional/skills distinction.

Artificial intelligence and women's knowledge: What can feminist epistemologies tell us?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the branch of computer science which seeks to model intelligent human behavior on a computer. In this paper the way in which symbolic AI is predicated on a traditional rationalist epistemology is described. Traditional criticisms of AI converge on the possibility of creating true artificial intelligence, whereas a feminist argument looks instead to the cultural setting of AI — whose knowledge and what type of knowledge is to be represented. Feminist epistemology can be used to support and to extend these arguments in two main directions, both of which have links to other philosophical or sociological traditions. The first direction focuses on the knowing subject and the second is concerned with the distinction between “knowing that” and “knowing how,” or the prepositional/skills distinction.

Transcendence as a Subset of Evolutionary Thinking: A Darwinian View of the Creative Experience

ABSTRACTThe states of transcendence and affective discontinuities as features of the creative act are posited as analogous to Darwin's theory of evolution. The intellectual essence of Darwin's argument is that randomness processed through a selection system yields purpose. Some recent studies suggest this process holds true for profound acts of creativity. Darwin's two criteria for change, randomness and a system of recognition, are examined in application to the creative act. The argument is made that extraordinary creative people use a specific selection process coupled with the ability to de‐structure or randomize their mental environment. Finally, techniques are proposed to structure a creative recognition system and to de‐structure the input that is processed to enhance creative results.Considerable research into creativity has been concerned with transcendent thinking, the sudden discontinuous pattern shifts that lead to wonderful new insights. Three schools of thought have attempted to explain and resolve this discontinuity. Overton and Newman (1982) describe two of these. There is the reductionist view taking the position that all creative thinking can be explained by continuous processing. Discontinuity is treated merely as a behavioral or affective phenomenon since by nature pre‐conscious algorithms are unavailable for systematic inquiry.The organismic view, on the other hand, takes the lofty position that transcendence is a function of indeterminacy: ideas actually operate in earthly terms but are post‐Newtonian in nature. That is, transcendent states are delocalized concepts operating beyond the tangible limitations of space and time. Attempts to measure these phenomena are doomed to the same outcome as the proverbial killing of the goose that laid the golden egg.McCarthy (1993) has recently attempted to reconcile the above positions by arguing that the answer may well be found in the field of quantum physics and elementary particle research. She proposes that nature is a duality. Creative insight and transcendence come about through the superposition of two realities, one which is “boundary‐free”; the other a more conscious process which is hierarchal and “boundary‐laden.”Presented here is a reductionist point of view asserting that what we consider to be transcendence — the mystical nature of creativity — is not only sequential but a subset of the evolutionary process as set forth by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species (1859). Further, the principles of Darwin's theory may be applied to speed and improve the creative process both for individuals and groups. Other researchers in the field (Campbell, 1960, Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992, Gruber& Davis, 1988, Kantorovich, 1993; Simonton, 1988), have invoked evolutionary thinking to explain the creative process. However, this argument looks at the two properties of evolution necessary for its function and shows how in highly creative people they may operate differently.

Apologia for ‘the Sabaean cultural-political area’

Firstly, I accept Beeston's proposal to refer ‘to linguistic data as Minaic, Sabaic, Qatabanic and Hadramitic, leaving Minaean etc. for non-linguistic contexts’ (Beeston, 1987a: 13). His argument (at least with respect to the distinction between the ‘Sabaean’ and the ‘Sabaic’) looks entirely convincing:The Sabaeans were the inhabitants of the area around Ma'rib. But they shared a common language(no doubt with dialectal varieties) with the peoples of the desert fringes between Ma'rib and Wadial-Jawf, of a considerable part of Wadi al-Jawf itself, and of the high plateaux lying in the angle of those two areas—Arḥab, Qā‘ al-Bawn, Qā‘ Ṣany‘ā’ etc. It is dubious whether these other peoples would have called themselves Sabaeans,1 and it might be preferable therefore to term the language Sabaic rather than Sabaean’ (Beeston, 1979: 115).

Public Health At A Crossroads

Public Health At A Crossroads

Reply to "The Interaction Order and the Micro-Macro Distinction"

A number of points in Mouzelis's comment are typical misinterpretations of my work. The main issues that I will address are 1) the relationship between interaction order and the micro-macro distinction, 2) the relationship between interaction order and size/space/ location, 3) the consequences of the author's misunderstanding of (1) for the argument that order comes from what I have called above and below, and 4) the consequences of misunderstanding the sui generis and the local nature of interaction order for the author's comment that my argument takes an unsatisfactory position on indeterminacy/ openness. These issues are central to my argument; therefore misinterpretation of these points has the effect of making my argument look inconsistent or worse. I have addressed parts of these issues in previous comments, but I feel that greater clarity is achieved with each successive exchange. At stake, I believe, is an understanding of the significance of several major strains in American sociology over the past 40 years. Without clarification of these points their contribution will not be appreciated. Point 1: Mouzelis bases much of his argument on the claim that my paper argues that all interaction is This claim requires an explanation because not only have I said no such thing, but in fact I have argued 1) that interaction order and interaction are not the same thing and 2) that interaction order is present in all sorts of social encounters. The best explanation I can come up with is that Mouzelis assumes I must be using the micro-macro distinction because I use the word interaction, and for him that word implies micro. I have not said that interaction is micro, nor have I used the micro-macro distinction in this paper, although one gets the impression from reading this comment that I have based my argument on it. In footnote 3 Mouzelis cites an alleged reference of mine to the micro-macro distinction. Because this is his only specific reference to my use of the terms, and because he refers to it repeatedly as evidence that I base my argument on the micro-macro distinction, it would seem to be a key reference. I do not find that reference in the paper, although I probably wrote it and am prepared to defend it. The point is that it does not seem to appear in the paper in question. Even if it did so, it is such a bald-faced misinterpretation that it would not require comment except that it seems to be made frequently. The words micro and/or macro appear several places in the paper. On pages 138 and 145 I mention the macro-micro debate. On page 146 I mention micro sociology in a footnote, and refer to Goffman as a micro sociologist. On page 146 I also cite Alexander's position on micro-macro issues. None of these references suggests in any way that I consider micro and interaction order phenomena to be the same. In fact, none constitutes a use of the distinction at all. All are references to the way in which the distinction has been used. Because Mouzelis seems to be basing much of his criticism of my work on the reference that does not appear in the paper, it requires an explanation. I did not say, as Mouzelis suggests, that one could not study macro/institutional levels of order and find

"Safe in Our Hands": the Prime Minister's Arguments Look a Little Threadbare

"Safe in Our Hands": the Prime Minister's Arguments Look a Little Threadbare

Isolation and Stigmatization in the Development of an Underclass: The Case of Chicano Gangs in East Los Angeles

A good deal of our concern in the study of social problems has to do with the emergence in American society of a predominantly minority urban underclass. Generally, social scientists rely on one or a combination of two approaches in explaining this phenomenon. The first approach the culture of poverty-argues for the existence of a tangle of pathology which is . . capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world (Moynihan, 1967:47). All that is required to sustain this underclass culture is a welfare state. An alternative approach, equally oversimplified here, argues that the minority underclass is a product of institutionalized racism, which operates in education, the job market, the housing market, and the criminal justice system. But both the culture of poverty and racism explanations focus on categories of people rather than on communities. The culture of poverty approach emphasizes individuals and their families. The discrimination argument looks at individuals in relation to their roles in the institutions of the larger society. Neither recognizes the dynamics working within the communities in which underclass families live. I suggest here that it would be fruitful to focus on differentiation within poor minority communities. Further, since deviance and potential deviance are also part of our image of the underclass, we may borrow from the labeling perspective to understand how deviants, and by extension, underclass families come to be differentiated further in their own minority communities. A case history-the development of Chicano youth gangs-shows some of these processes at work, and also demonstrates that it is possible for these trends to be reversed. Thus we can also identify some of the dynamics involved in the reabsorption of members of the underclass into a less deviant or stigmatized segment of the minority poor.