Rational Reflection Research Articles

Comparing the Airtraq® with the LMA CTrach ™

Comparing the Airtraq® with the <i>LMA CTrach</i> ™

Philosophical Issues and their Implications for the Systems Architect

Many system architects select their system methodologies without explicit consideration of the philosophical perspectives that impact their decisions. This paper describes how the concepts of ontology and epistemology apply in systems science. Ontology is how we specify terms of reference for existence, allowing us to understand the theory of existence via an ‘existence framework’. Epistemology, the theory of knowledge, allows us to explore new models and theories of knowledge acquisition so the best system-based methodologies can be deployed to solve complex system problems. After introducing these concepts, the paper presents system science issues and assesses the impact of ontological, axiological and epistemological perspectives on system methodology selection, research, system design and deployment. An ontological viewpoint such as realism, as an objective view is contrasted versus nationalism, a personal perceptional view. An epistemological viewpoint is explored comparing knowledge as a product of sensory perception or rational reflection. The paper’s significant contribution is that it helps system architects understand that their philosophical views of systems science impact their system methodology choices.

Strategy: Rationality, Intuition, and Accountability

In this paper, I explore the nature of strategic decision making. In particular, I am concerned with the interplay of rational reflection and intuitive insight in strategic contexts. I argue that it is in the very nature of strategic situations that they cannot be exhaustively analysed in terms of the available evidence, and that hence there always is an intuitive element to strategic decision making. I consider a variety of ways to explain the notion of intuition and conclude that intuition and rationality ought not to be conceived as incompatible with one another. It follows, I claim, that the intuitive component of strategic thought allows for at least some degree of public accountability.

Whistle-Blower Narratives: The Experience of Choiceless Choice

C. Fred Alford Whistle-Blower Narratives: The Experience of Choiceless Choice ONE MIGHT ARGUE THAT THE VERY CONCEPT OF A CHOICELESS CHOICE disqualifies the action undertaken as ethical.' Ethical choices are by their very nature the result of willful choice, even if they are not always the result of rational reflection—as when, for example, someone runs into a burning building to save a child’s life. By the end of this essay, I hope you will be convinced that dividing the world in this way is not useful. Not only because the way one lives so as to find oneself in a position of choiceless choice is itself an ethical act, but also because the person one is so as to be placed in a position of choiceless choice is already an ethical fact. More im portant than judging these ethical actors, however, is understanding the people they became. Listening to their stories is the best way to do this. I have sought to understand the whistle-blower, one who speaks out against illegal or unethical practices in the organization where he or she works. Most whistle-blowers are fired (though it is adm ittedly difficult to m easure these things).1 Theirs is an act of considerable consequence, especially w hen one considers that am ong fired whistle­ blowers, m ost will lose their homes and ultimately, their marriages. A m ajority will turn to alcohol or drugs for some period during their long journey (Miethe, 1999: 58, 78-79; Rothschild and Miethe, 1996: 15-16; Glazer and Glazer, 1989: 206-207; Alford, 2001:19-21).2 W hile I devoted considerable time to interviewing whistle-blow­ ers, a majority was spent attending a whistle-blowers support group, social research Vol 74 : No 1 : Spring 2007 223 listening to whistle-blowers tell their tales. In addition, I stayed several days and nights at a retreat on a farm for stressed-out whistle-blowers. The farm had been purchased by a retired psychologist w ith a large clientele of whistle-blowers (not the best way to get rich in the m ental health field) who had graciously opened his farmhouse door to almost any whistle-blower who needed a place to get away for a few days (or even longer in several cases). Stories heard there for the third or fourth tim e at three in the m orning took on a whole new dimension as some of the defensive walls came tum bling down—not just for the teller of the tale, but for the listener as well. There is something terrifying about the experience ofwhistle-blowing; Daniel Ellsberg, the Vietnam-era whistle­ blower, compares the em otional experience to that of a space-walking astronaut who has cut his lifeline to the m other ship (Alford, 2001: 5). Because I spent m ost o f my tim e listening to whistle-blowers talk w ith each other, mine is a narrative analysis: an account of the struc­ ture of whistle-blowers’ stories. To be sure, some of these stories they told to me, but m ost I first heard whistle-blowers tell to each other. The structure of the whistle-blower support group, or perhaps I should say its ethos, was for the m embers to go around the table telling their stories. Since I attended the support group for over six m onths, and since many of the attendees were regulars, this m eant I heard m any of the same stories again and again. That turned out to be a boon, as it was only after the third or fourth hearing that I began to get the point. There is another reason I em ploy narrative analysis. Much of my previous research has involved bringing psychoanalysis to bear on social theory. I originally thought I would do this w ith the whistle-blow­ ers, uncovering the depth psychological sources of their acts. Soon, however, I came to recognize that asking these m en and wom en about their childhoods, or interpreting their stories about being crushed by organized power in psychoanalytic term s, would be embarrassing to me, and an insult to them . Instead, I...

The logic of mystery

This paper proposes an analytical taxonomy of ‘mystery’ based upon what makes a mystery mysterious. I begin by distinguishing mysteries that depend on what we do not know (e.g. detective fiction) from mysteries that depend on what we do know (e.g. religious mysteries). Then I distinguish three possible grounds for the latter type. The third and most provocative ground offers a mathematical analogy for how rational reflection can be appropriate to mystery without compromising its intrinsically mysterious character. I conclude with reflections on the metaphysical presuppositions that this understanding of mystery requires.

Axiological Horizons of the European Identity and Their Impact on the University

The European axiological community, which was described in the past as Christianitas, united the rational reflection of ancient Greece, the Roman commitment to law, and the paradox of the Gospel of love, with its ultimate revelation of God's solidarity with humankind in the drama of Calvary. The article describes the role of medieval universities in shaping the cultural unity of Europe. Presenting new cultural challenges of our epoch it fosters new efforts to protect academy ecology. These efforts should unite all members of the Academy who are concerned about the future of European culture and eager to promote humanism in its classical version.

Classification of the Solutions of Constant Rational Semi-Dynamical Reflection Equations

We propose a classification of the solutions K to the semi-dynamical reflection equation with constant rational structure matrices associated to rational scalar Ruijsenaars-Schneider model. Four sets of solutions are identified and simple analytic transformations generate all solutions from these sets.

Explicit solutions to the Korteweg–de Vries equation on the half line

Certain explicit solutions to the Korteweg–de Vries equation in the first quadrant of the xt-plane are presented. Such solutions involve algebraic combinations of truly elementary functions, and their initial values correspond to rational reflection coefficients in the associated Schrödinger equation. In the reflectionless case such solutions reduce to pure N-soliton solutions. An illustrative example is provided.

Philosophical tendencies in the genesis of our understanding of physical nature

The rise of a long-standing legacy of natural scientific thought is found in ancient Greece – the well-spring of Western civilization and the source of articulated rational reflection. The earliest phase of Greek culture already gave birth to theoretical thinking about the universe. The Pythagoreans are first of all famous for their emphasis on number as a mode of explanation. However, in their thesis that everything is number they solely acknowledged rational numbers (fractions) and this approach eventually stranded on the discovery of irrational numbers that led to the geometrization of Greek mathematics. This transition generated at once also a powerful space metaphysics overarching the entire medieval period. It was only during the early modern period that the predecessors and successors of Galileo contemplated an appreciation for motion as a new principle of explanation (compare the classical mechanistic world view of the universe as a mechanism of material particles in motion). But also this mechanistic reduction (through which all physical processes were reduced to the motion of charged or uncharged mass-points) eventually failed because it was unable to account for the irreversibility of physical processes. As a result it was only 20th century physics that managed to acknowledge the decisive qualifying role of energy-operation (thus of the physical aspect) in the existence of material things and processes. This article is concluded with an explanation of the significance of the preceding considerations for a theoretical approximation of the mysterious nature of matter.

Philosophy—what is to be done?

Philosophical thinking, in the historically original sense, is simply the human mind in operation, unaided by anything supernatural and unfettered by any human authority or any procedure for reaching some pre-given end. This means that “philosophy” originally included far more than it does now, including all the natural sciences, as well as rational reflection on society, history, and art. What this means for us now is that philosophy must be an essentially outward-facing discipline, open to others. Most importantly, it needs now to be open to the sciences, to practical social reflection, and to its own history. But what philosophy brings to all its reflections is above all a spirit of critical reflection, respect for evidence and argument, and a ruthless honesty that demands of people that they form their beliefs and views of life according to the best reasons and information they have, rather than forming their views according to their wishes or prejudices, or letting them be dictated by authorities or social traditions. In this sense, we are living in an unphilosophical, or even anti-philosophical, age, but this makes it all the more important for philosophy to continue to do its work.

Reasons, Responsibility, and Fiction

Reasons, Responsibility, and Fiction Benedict Smith (bio) Keywords responsibility, reflection, reasons, fiction Cartwright's article considers two candidate theories of responsibility and examines their relative adequacy by assessing them in light of our reactions to a dramatic and horrifying set of circumstances. Cartwright initiates the dialectic by noting how our intuitions are in conflict. For instance, although we are instantly horrified by the murders Harris perpetrated, we might naturally experience quite different emotions and reach different judgments when we reflect on the miserable and pathetic nature of Harris's upbringing and his experiences in adult life. Although we might think that Harris is responsible in a very clear sense for murdering his victims, we might feel also that his actions were the outcome of factors beyond his control, and for which he cannot be held responsible. In short, we think that Harris is and is not responsible. Overall, Cartwright's aim is to: "illuminate both the theory and practice of holding people responsible" (2006, 144). In the end, what is illuminated is that "the practice of responsibility unavoidably depends on one sort of pretence or another" (2006, 155). Although the two theories that Cartwright has chosen to consider differ in various ways, they share a common feature of being, in some sense, "fictitious." The article examines in some detail the two theories of responsibility and succeeds in providing insight to some potentially intricate material. In this brief commentary, I cannot address adequately the variety of interesting aspects and implications of Cartwright's paper. I do, however, offer some critical interpretation of Cartwright's construal of the theories under consideration, and also say a little about the status and role of fiction in Cartwright's analysis. Responsibility and the "Reflective Self" According to Cartwright, a central commitment of the "reflective self" view of responsibility is that a rational part of the self is responsible for deliberating about and reflecting on desires, and that the reflective self is the author of action (or at least authorizes the origins of action). The critical capacity of this part of the self endorses or rejects desires, and thus determines whether or not desires manifest in action and display constitutive elements of personality. The reflective self is autonomous with respect to the desiring part of the self; the former can arbitrate over desires precisely because it enjoys this sort of rational autonomy. This internalist conception of reflection and rationality has a long tradition, one that has exerted influence in a number of domains including [End Page 161] moral psychology and psychotherapy. It is well known that Anthony Kenny claimed that the very idea of "mental health" was Plato's invention (Kenny 1969, 229).1 The Platonic picture rests on understanding the soul as capable of proper functioning and in a state of health only when the relevant constitutive elements are brought into a form of cooperative harmony.2 Pivotal in reaching this harmony, is the extent to which desires are supervised by the capacity for rational self-governance. For the present context, the important claim is that there exists an autonomous and internal-to-subject faculty that specializes in rational reflection on desires, and that can be brought to bear on desires in such a way so as to motivate and justify subsequent action. This is close to the central commitment of the reflective self view that considers responsibility as primarily an internal matter of the relation between desires and rationality. Responsibility is connected to the ability of an agent to exercise some cognitive faculty that passes critical judgment on the desires that the agent possesses; such a faculty endorses or rejects desires. The reflective self view has at its center the thought that responsibility is related to the appropriate functioning of some internal process. However, unless the rational faculty of humans is infallible, there needs to be some account of the correctness of each act of desire endorsement or rejection. There must be something that explains why any particular endorsement, say, is justified; some further ground the appeal to which provides guidance and justification for the rational self. But this just pushes the explanatory burden further back and generates, as Cartwright notes, a regress. Nonetheless...

Uncivil Tongues: Slander and Honour in Susanna Rowson's Trials of the Human Heart

Uncivil Tongues:Slander and Honour in Susanna Rowson’s Trials of the Human Heart Joseph Fichtelberg (bio) One of the greatest ordeals that Meriel Howard, the long-suffering heroine of Trials of the Human Heart, shares with her creator, Susanna Rowson, involves the effects of unmerited slander. One example among many may help to establish this parallel. Accosted by a rakish admirer, Meriel is discovered by her equally dissolute husband, who immediately spurns her and confronts her "abandoned seducer": "Tell me, thou vile reptile," he says, "who under the mask of friendship hast dishonoured me, what reparation can you make for the peace you have destroyed." 1 The answer follows immediately: "To-morrow between five and six o'clock, I shall expect to see you in a proper place to settle this difference" (3:123). Although the duel is averted, this is not the first time in the text that such charges are levelled. As she imparts in the preface, Rowson was herself slandered by a vile "reptile" (xiii), William Cobbett, who assailed her "sudden conversion to republicanism" as mercenary and subversive. 2 Unable to respond in the field, she did the next best thing: she wrote a [End Page 425] literary defence in which a persecuted British woman melodramatically and stoically withstands assaults on her character. If as a woman she felt "embarrassed and timid" (xi), she nevertheless found the proper place to defend her fragile honour. Readers of Rowson's better-known Charlotte Temple will have little difficulty, in this brief account, hearing echoes of that best-selling fiction. Both protagonists suffer such severe consequences for innocent errors that their male persecutors are damned in the process, indicted for exhibiting what Julia Stern calls "the structures of domination that inform patriarchal practice." 3 But Rowson's deliberate linking of the later novel to the public sphere, where character is routinely assaulted, suggests another emphasis that may cause us to revise our notions of both the writer and her literary medium. The novel is a shrewdly effective exploration of two key concerns in early American public life. Slander and honour were not the preserve of sentimental seduction narratives; they were cultural markers through which an expanding public sphere explored new relations of power and authority. Not only was the function of honour in a republic relentlessly reshaped by public attacks on character, but also the power of the public was continuously rehearsed and altered through a process of mutual suspicion. 4 As a woman, a writer, and an actress, Rowson was in a peculiarly favourable position to appreciate and intervene in that process. Her novel sought both to capture the occasion of slander and to convey its internal mechanisms, by depicting how Meriel's story is appropriated and distorted by others. As an actress, Rowson also had a keen sense of how public consumption could entangle and alter private scripts, a knowledge that could yield a peculiar cultural authority. Understanding the performative nature of honour conferred a power of its own. Rowson's novel also offers an alternative to slander in scenarios depicting the exchange of gifts and vows, exchanges intended to associate honour with rituals of reconciliation involving both Rowson and her readers. In Trials of the Human Heart, Rowson uses Cobbett's assault to examine how wounded honour may be renegotiated in the public sphere. [End Page 426] * * * According to Jürgen Habermas, who set forth its elements nearly forty years ago, the public sphere is a forum for rational reflection driven by a bourgeoisie discovering its cultural authority. Whereas the Old Regime in France approached politics through spectacle and "representation," the bourgeoisie found its distinctive voice in the critical discussions of the salon, the coffee house, and the political pamphlet. 5 The public sphere arose through a complex intersection of three realms: the state, the "intimate" family, and the "private" realm of economic exchange. Since the family, as revealed in personal letters and diaries, cultivated an "audience oriented subjectivity"—one fully conscious of its need for others—it could model the distinctive relations of polite bourgeois society. 6 Overlaying this intimate sphere was the private conduct of economic man, presumed to operate according to the rational...

After Dolly—Ethical limits to the use of biotechnology on farm animals

The cloning of Dolly the sheep gave rise to a widespread call for limits on interference with life. Until recently, the main limits were technical: what it is possible to do. Now scientists are faced with ethical limits as well: what it is acceptable to do. In this context, we take ethics to involve systematic and rational reflection on moral issues raised in the public sphere. The concerns of the general public are not necessarily valid, but they are the best point of departure if the discussion is to lead to a socially robust framework for setting limits to the use of animal biotechnology. To assess public understanding, we examine two sources of data: Eurobarometer surveys from 1991 to 2002 and a qualitative interview study carried out in Denmark in 2000. Based on these sources, we formulate, and then discuss closely, the following concerns: dangers to human health and the environment, animal welfare, animal integrity, and usefulness. In the final part of the article, it is proposed that a principle of proportionality should be the foundation for socially robust applications of animal biotechnology. Only in cases where the usefulness of the technology can be said to outweigh countervailing moral concerns, as in biomedical research, will applications of animal biotechnology stand up to scrutiny in the public sphere.

Theology and psychology – the interdisciplinary work of Fraser Watts

In the preface to his book, Theology and Psychology, Fraser Watts, a lecturer in Theology and Natural Science at the University of Cambridge, states that he approaches “… the interface between theology and psychology by looking at each discipline from the perspective of the other. This includes a religious perspective on several current hot topics in psychology, such as evolution, neuroscience, and computer intelligence. I also consider theological topics like divine action, salvation history and eschatology, in each case using the psychological perspective in a different way”. By taking an interdisciplinary approach, Watts aims at proposing a psychology of religious experience. He considers theology to be the rational reflection on the Christian tradition. When exponents of this tradition are in dialogue with exponents of psychology, the focus falls on human nature. Watts admits that a certain lack of competence in one of the two disciplines can be a problem when working in an interdisciplinary way. However, he is willing to take the risk. Watts worked in psychology for 25 years and was also involved with a medical research council, before taking up a position at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.

The Concept of ‘Sound Science’ in Risk Management Decisions

The concept of ‘sound science’ has taken on an increasingly important role in law, regulation and risk management. While referring somewhat generically to scientific statements that have passed some form of evidential hurdle, the concept has not been given a clear foundation from which to judge whether a particular risk estimate is or is not a sound basis for risk management decisions. This paper explores a variety of considerations, from both philosophy and scientific practice, that are useful in judging the ‘soundness’ of the science underlying risk estimates. Within this conception, ‘sound science’ emerges as the result of a dialogical process rooted in the rational exploration of the evidential basis of competing risk estimates. It is proposed that ‘sound science’ has three characteristics: a process that satisfies criteria of rational dialogue and reflection; an uncertainty distribution that is sufficiently narrow to allow ‘upper-bound’ risk estimates to provide apt means to identify the benefits of proposed management actions; and an assessment of overall epistemic status, including the status of causal claims for any associations, which makes the manager reasonably confident that adjustment of a purported cause will in fact reduce the risk.

Values in the practice of teaching, and questions for quality and equity in schools

Noting that research on cognitive development and on values are normally separate, the author shows the connection by closely examining different ways in which teachers relate to students. Modes of discipline based on positional authority, and even force, rather than on an ethical dialogue, not only reduce students’ self-esteem but also limit their ability to reflect on situations with a degree of objectivity. In classrooms where the discourse is grounded in rational reflection, students develop greater self-esteem and engagement but also benefit cognitively through engagement in higher-level reasoning.

Is Art a Thing of the Past?

The claim that art has no role to play in what is of highest significance for modernity is often attributed to Hegel. Against this interpretation, the paper makes the following claims: First, Hegel does not claim that art is simply superseded in modernity by rational reflection. Artistic expression remains an essential human need in modernity. Second, Hegel's ideal of modern ethical life in which values shape human nature has an essentially aesthetic shape. Third, Hegel describes the foundation of a new shared form of life-in particular, the ideal ethical life of the future-not as a rational act of legislation, but as the politically creative work of art. This idea appears in Hegel's early thinking and shapes his mature thought of the figure of the world-historical individual. Finally, Hegel turns to art to give life to the tragedy of the foundation of the state in his discussions of Sophocles' Antigone and Schiller's Wallenstein.

Home Is Where the Heart Is: National Identity and Expatriation in Charlotte Smith's The Young Philosopher

Home Is Where the Heart Is: National Identity and Expatriation in Charlotte Smith's The Young Philosopher

A reasonable grief—discursive constructions of grief in a public conversation on raising the shipwrecked M/S Estonia

The paper uses a debate in Swedish newspapers about the fate of the corpses from the shipwrecked M/S Estonia as a case study, in order to demonstrate how different discourses on grief construct a normative way of mourning. The theoretical vantage point is a discursive perspective on grief where different discourses are regarded as resources and limitations for how to express and make sense of bereavement. It maintains that what are to be considered as normal or deviant are social and cultural constructions, not ontological facts. The analysis demonstrates a notion of normal grief as grief work that moves through a process from emotional reaction to rational reflection, and in which ritual practices play an important part. The study illustrates how negotiations regarding grief and mourning draw on different discourses. It also elucidates how a specific notion of grief is constructed as normal and legitimate at the same time as other manifestations of grief are made abnormal and deviant.

The Transcendental Necessity of Morality

David Gauthier tries to defend morality by showing that rational agents would choose to adopt a fundamental choice disposition that permits them to cooperate in prisoner's dilemmas. In this paper, I argue that Gauthier, rather than trying to work out a prudential justification for his favored choice disposition, should opt for a transcendental justification. I argue that the disposition in question is the product of socialization, not rational choice. However, only agents who are socialized in such a way that they acquire a disposition of this type could acquire the capacity to use language. Given the internal connection between language and thought, this means that no agent endowed with such a disposition could rationally choose to adopt another. Thus rational reflection by moral agents upon their own fundamental choice disposition will have no tendency to destabilize it.“It is a necessary truth that people tend to do what they think they ought to do, for it is a necessary truth that people who occupy a linguistic position which means /ought to do A now, tend to do A. If they did not, the position they occupy could not mean Iought to do A now.”Wilfrid Sellars, “Some Reflections on Language Games.”