Popular Argument Research Articles

The Fortress State: Extreme Militarization in Jordan

Abstract Jordan is one of the most militarized states in the world. Why? Traditional explanations hold that the kingdom’s bloated armed forces and security institutions reflect authoritarian dynamics and frequent regional wars. However, such popular arguments falter. Jordan has not been a primary combatant to any major conflict for a half-century, and it is no more authoritarian than other Arab autocracies. This essay instead suggests that militarization begets militarization. In political terms, Jordan’s coercive apparatus underpins the tribal coalitional bargain that sustains the Hashemite monarchy. It also paradoxically breeds the very domestic insecurity that it purports to prevent. By exhausting the economy, extreme militarization has spawned public unrest spurred by high unemployment and fiscal crises. And by necessitating a pro-Western foreign policy, it has attracted regional terrorism and triggered further domestic dissent. In sum, Jordanian militarization persists not from exogenous structural forces, but the deliberate choices of its political architects.

The traversal of the infinite: considering a beginning for an infinite past

This paper offers a critical assessment of the Successive Addition Argument (SAA) in support of past finitism, i.e., the thesis that the past of the universe is finite in duration. This old philosophical argument, re-popularized by William Lane Craig in modern times, contends that the universe’s past cannot be infinite because an infinite series cannot be formed by successive addition. I first address a recently popular objection to the argument, namely the Zeno Objection, showing that it can be easily dismissed once each addition is taken to have the same duration. Nevertheless, I contend that the onus of the proof lies on those who propose the SAA, and that their main argumentative strategies fail. Indeed, many of their arguments are based on the supposedly uncontroversial claim that one cannot traverse the infinite by starting somewhere. I argue that a complete traversal of the infinite, with a beginning infinitely far from its end, is logically and metaphysically possible. Other popular arguments against traversed infinities are based on thought experiments such as the backward counter or the Tristram Shandy thought experiments. I argue that, once infinitely far beginnings are granted, none of the arguments based on such thought experiments prove effective, so that the SAA must be rejected.

What Is It to Be Real? Numbers as Real Species of a Category in the Late Medieval Debate about the Ontological Status of Numbers

Abstract The article deals with one of the facets of a hitherto almost completely unexplored subject: the late medieval debate about the ontological status of numbers. It focuses on one of the most popular arguments in favor of a realist view of number. The realist view holds that a number adds a new form over and above the things that it numbers. The argument for the view is based on the thesis that since the categories are a classification of extramental reality, and number belongs to the category of Quantity, it, together with its form, must have extramental existence. The second part of the paper is devoted to an exposition and analysis of various rebuttals of this argument advanced by critics of realism about numbers. Throughout the whole discussion, the paper also gives an evaluation of the dialectical moves made by the participants in the debate.

Exploration of the Propagation of Hippocampal Theta Oscillations in Freely Moving Rats

Comprehending the mechanisms by which theta waves propagate across the hippocampus is of utmost importance in understanding various aspects of cognition in rodent models. A popular argument made by those studying hippocampal rhythms is that they are synchronous throughout the medial temporal lobe. However, recent studies have concluded that theta oscillations travel as waves along the septotemporal axis of the hippocampus. Our experimental goal was to derive a relationship between theta oscillations in the anterior and posterior regions of the hippocampus by examining local field potential in freely moving rats. We trained a mixed-sex cohort of five Fisher Brown Norway hybrid rats to run on a circular track for a food reward and implanted them with an intracranial silicon probe in the CA1 region of the anterior dorsal hippocampus (AP: -2.8 ML: 1.5 DV: 4.0) and the CA1 region of the posterior parietal hippocampus (AP: -5.6 ML: 4.2 DV: 4.5). After a recovery period, the rats were reintroduced to the circular track where data was collected from each site. This poster presents the activity of traveling dentate spikes, ripples, theta, and gamma within these hippocampal regions. R01MH126236 1R01MH109548-01A1. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

Monsieur Mosse

Raimo Jääskeläinen, better known as Monsieur Mosse (1932–1992), was a hairdresser, makeup artist, gossip columnist, convicted blackmailer, and Finland’s first out gay male celebrity. The topic of endless articles, befriending and falling out with beauty queens and fashion models, publishing a tell-all memoir elaborating on his taste for luxury, working for straight porn magazines and briefly editing one, Mosse was both the subject and object of popular media and, in his flamboyance, a key domestic celebrity figure of the 1970s and 1980s. Meanwhile, his relationship with the gay rights movement was frictional at best in that his brand was considered “dishonorable” vis-à-vis liberatory politics. Building on media historical inquiry and taking cue from Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller’s (2022) popular argument for studying “bad gays” – historical figures not fitting aspirational and inspirational narratives of queer activism and agency – this article examines Mosse’s trajectory as a celebrity, focusing especially on his 1980s collaborations with the sex press. We argue that Mosse’s particular brand of shameless extravagance and candid gossiping knowingly operationalized “badness” as a vehicle of distinction and visibility in a largely homophobic national context.

What is moral fetishism?

According to Kant, an action is morally praiseworthy when it is performed on the basis of the “motive of duty”, because the action is morally right. In the contemporary literature, this view is known as the de dicto account of moral worth. And, the de dicto account has in recent years been supplanted by the de re account, which holds instead that an action is morally praiseworthy when it is performed on the basis of those reasons that make the action right in the first place; that is, on the basis of its right-making features. One popular argument against the de dicto view and in favour of the de re view is that the former is “fetishistic”. This charge of fetishism was originally laid by Michael Smith, and has been taken up by very many supporters of the de re view since. But, this article asks, what is moral fetishism, and in what way is the de dicto view (purportedly) guilty of it? In this article, I consider four possible readings of the fetishism charge. I ultimately argue that the de dicto account evades them all.

Pashtunwali: An Afghan Ethical Code and Cultural Identity in Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell

The Pashtuns and their identity have been misrepresentedover the past decades. These people are represented as ferocious, uncivilized, and anarchistic. Such falsification ruined the otherwise old set of principles of Pashtun people known as Pashtunwali. This study aims to discuss the ideas of Pashtunwali in Marcus Luttrell's Lone Survivor through the theory of cultural studies by Stuart Hall. Pashtunwali, otherwise called Pakhtunwali or the Pashtun code of conduct, is a conventional moral code and lifestyle followed by the Pashtun people for centuries. Marcus Luttrell experiences the working of Pashtunwali in his stay at an Afghan village Sabray, while hiding from the Taliban. Through this autobiographical narrative, the researcher will analyze how the concept of Pashtunwali governs the lives of Pashtun people. It will give a counterargument to the otherwise popular argument of the misrepresentations of Pashtun culture.

Russians’ Perception of the Conflict with Ukraine: Testing the “Spiral of Silence” Hypothesis

Russians' attitude towards the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the very possibility of its quantitative measurement became a subject of heated debates inside Russian sociological community. The most popular argument among professionals who believe that the level of support for the military actions is lower than the recorded values is the "Spiral of Silence" model used by E. Noelle-Neumann to explain people's unwillingness to express unpopular opinions out of fear of facing social disapproval. To test the hypothesis about the spiral of silence we used the method of all-Russian phone survey (N = 1977), repeating the railway test performed by Noelle-Neumann for measuring the willingness of supporters and opponents of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict to discuss it with their political opponents. The results of the research showed that in Russian public opinion about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict there is indeed a spiral of silence, as described by Noelle-Neumann, taking place. It influences both sides of the debate, its effect on the opponents of the conflict being, of course, significantly stronger (21% against 35%). However, opponents of military action have learned better than their opponents to resist the spiral of silence. Therefore, with a possible change in the climate of opinion in Russia, opponents of the military conflict will have greater opportunities than their opponents to promote their own narrative about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Along with the railway test, we have conducted research of attitudes towards the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the respondents’ close circle, in which the share of the conflict supporters turns out to be much lower than among the respondents themselves. This may be an indirect sign of a shift in the samples towards the position of Russian-Ukrainian conflict supporters.

Macroeconomic Policies and Foreign Capital Inflows in Nigeria

Abstract The growth of manufacturing sector output in Nigeria is currently sluggish, if not stagnant, despite massive inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as well as macroeconomic policies initiated by successive Nigerian governments. The study investigated how macroeconomic policies and FDI inflows have impacted on the manufacturing sector in Nigeria. The Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) unit root test was adopted to determine the stationary properties of the data, and the order of integration of the variables was tested using the Johansen cointegration test. The impact and interactions of macroeconomic policies on the manufacturing sector are less understood and shallow in the extant literature. The government’s macroeconomic policies encourage FDI in the communications and oil sector with a negative impact on the manufacturing sector. This is implicated in inadequate capital investments and technological diffusion. Nonetheless, the study shifts the paradigm in popular arguments that FDI is imperialistic, hence universally exploitative, to a new hypothesis that the failure of the manufacturing sector to tap into FDI and yield desirable growth output is linked to less viable globally competitive macroeconomic policy frameworks in Nigeria. The study therefore recommends that the Nigerian government should review its macroeconomic policies, particularly the monetary and exchange rate, and draw up proactive human capital development plans that can directly contribute to the development of the productive capacity of the country’s population.

Truth is One (No Need for Pluralism)

AbstractIn this paper, I discuss the currently most popular argument for alethic pluralism, maintaining that the so-called scope problem provides no compelling reason for abandoning the traditional view that truth is one and the same (substantive) property across the various regions of thought or discourse in which it is ascribed or denied to the things we think or say. I disarm the argument by showing that the scope problem does not arise for a number of non-deflationary, monistic views of truth that meet certain semantic and metaphysical constraints, for one can accept any of these views and provide a plausible account of the fact that mental and linguistic tokenings belonging to different regions of discourse involve radically different ways of engaging with reality ? from detecting pre-existing facts to constituting them.

Existence and the existential quantifier

AbstractThis paper draws a distinction between the existential quantifier and the symbol ‘∃’ used to express it, on the one hand, and existence and ‘exists’, on the other. It argues that some popular arguments in metaphysics, including arguments against vague existence and arguments against deflationary metaontology (which views ontological disputes as lacking substance), are guilty of fudging this distinction. The paper draws some lessons for metaphysical debate about existence and highlights some heretofore ignored and attractive positions in logical space.

The resilience of monarchies in the Greater Middle East: The lightning rod effect, crackdown on protest, and patrimonial links

The paper examines the factors that allowed the Greater Middle East monarchies to survive the protests known as the “Arab Spring”. The author considers the popular argument in scientific and media-political discourse about the culturally conditioned legitimacy of the Middle Eastern monarchies, and also presents several cases of successful anti-monarchist revolutions in the region (Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Yemen). In addition, the work develops the idea that it can conditionally divide all the monarchies of the Greater Middle East into two types: individualistic and clan. The paper shows that patrimonial ties, which have been carefully built over several decades, are an important element in the stability of monarchies.

The origin of LYONs: A case study in financial innovation

The origin of LYONs: A case study in financial innovation

Research Note: Intergenerational Transmission Is Not Sufficient for Positive Long-Term Population Growth.

All leading long-term global population projections agree on continuing fertility decline, resulting in a rate of population size growth that will continue to decline toward zero and would eventually turn negative. However, scholarly and popular arguments have suggested that because fertility transmits intergenerationally (i.e., higher fertility parents tend to have higher fertility children) and is heterogeneous within a population, long-term population growth must eventually be positive, as high-fertility groups come to dominate the population. In this research note, we show that intergenerational transmission of fertility is not sufficient for positive long-term population growth, for empirical and theoretical reasons. First, because transmission is imperfect, the combination of transmission rates and fertility rates may be quantitatively insufficient for long-term population growth: higher fertility parents may nevertheless produce too few children who retain higher fertility preferences. Second, today even higher fertility subpopulations show declining fertility rates, which may eventually fall below replacement (and in some populations already are). Therefore, although different models of fertility transmission across generations reach different conclusions, depopulation is likely under any model if, in the future, even higher fertility subpopulations prefer and achieve below-replacement fertility. These results highlight the plausibility of long-term global depopulation and the importance of understanding the possible consequences of depopulation.

Murder in the Garment District: The Grip of Organized Crime and the Decline of Labor in the United States

Murder in the Garment District: The Grip of Organized Crime and the Decline of Labor in the United States

Patrimony at Risk: Market Uncertainty and Right-Wing Voting

The current literature suggests that financial assets push investors to vote for conservative parties given that right-wing policies are said to generate higher returns. Another popular argument is that wealth reduces demand for welfare spending given that private assets can be used as a substitute for social benefits. What I ask in this study is if asset owners always support right-wing parties and a trimmed welfare state. I argue that owners of financial assets become less tempted by free-market policy offerings when there is uncertainty in financial markets. The dot-com bubble, the financial crisis, and most recently the massive impact on financial markets of the coronavirus show that savings can evaporate in a matter of days. I show that the support for right-wing parties decreases in areas with much financial assets under such conditions.

The structure of semantic norms

AbstractThe normativity of meaning—introduced by Kripke in 1982, and the subject of active debate since the early 1990s—has been exclusively understood in terms of duty‐imposing norms. But there are norms of another type, well‐known within the philosophy of law: authority‐conferring norms. Philosophers thinking and writing about the normativity of meaning—normativists, anti‐normativists, and even Kripke himself—seem to have failed to consider the possibility that semantic norms are authority‐conferring. I argue that semantic norms should be understood as having an authority‐conferring structure, and show how this allows normativism about meaning to escape the two most popular arguments against it.

Feminism versus Male Supremacy: An Assessment of the Validity of Gender Equality Theory

Feminism is a movement seeking to restore gender equality between male and female sexes. However, why seek to restore gender equality? Is the male really supreme to the female sex? This work assesses the validity of gender equality theory. The paper focuses on the examination of the abstractions presented as arguments in support of gender equality theory. This study project adopted a qualitative research design which employed a qualitative approach in the examination of the validity of the two most popular arguments which support gender equality theory. The paper concludes that, feminist conception of equality is utopian; and, wanting women’s freedom from the imposition of what is portrayed as male hegemony is simply ignoring one’s transcendence.

Accuracy, probabilism, and the insufficiency of the alethic

The best and most popular argument for probabilism is the accuracy-dominance argument, which purports to show that alethic considerations alone support the view that an agent’s degrees of belief should always obey the axioms of probability. I argue that extant versions of the accuracy-dominance argument face a problem. In order for the mathematics of the argument to function as advertised, we must assume that every omniscient credence function is classically consistent; there can be no worlds in the set of dominance-relevant worlds that obey some other logic. This restriction cannot be motivated on alethic grounds unless we’re also willing to accept that rationality requires belief in every metaphysical necessity, as the distinction between a priori logical necessities and a posteriori metaphysical ones is not an alethic distinction. To justify the restriction to classically consistent worlds, non-alethic motivation is required. And thus, if there is a version of the accuracy-dominance argument in support of probabilism, it isn’t one that is grounded in alethic considerations alone.

The Creation of Adam and the Biblical Origins of Race in The Slave’s Friend (1836–1838)

The creation of Adam out of dust is a familiar tradition from the Book of Genesis. In abolitionist literature of the nineteenth century, this biblical narrative became the basis for a theory about the origins of race, arguing that because Adam was formed from red clay, neither he nor his descendants were white. This interpretation of Genesis underscored the value of non-white ancestors both in the biblical narrative and in human history and undermined popular theological arguments that upheld color-based racial hierarchies that privileged whiteness in the United States. This article examines the creation of Adam in Genesis 2 and its use in racial theory and abolitionist rhetoric, focusing on the children’s anti-slavery periodical The Slave’s Friend, published from 1836 to 1838.