Statistical Method and the Peircean Account of Truth

2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-314
Author(s):  
Andrew Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Method ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Definition Of

Peirce is often credited with having formulated a pragmatic theory of truth. This can be misleading, if it is assumed that Peirce was chiefly interested in providing a metaphysical analysis of the immediate conditions under which a belief or proposition is true, or the conditions under which a proposition or belief is said to be madetrue. Cheryl Misak has exposed the subtleties in Peirce's discussion of truth, especially showing the difficulties faced by any ascription to him of an analytic definition of truth. In this paper I follow Misak in urging that Peirce's contribution to the philosophical discussion about the nature of truth was not of that kind. What makes his pragmatic approach distinctive is that rather than attempting to state the nature of truth per se, it attempts to uncover the beliefs and expectations we commit ourselves to when we make specific claims that such and such is true or is the case.

Historicity and Christian Life-Experience in the Early Philosophy of Martin Heidegger

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Anna Jani
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Philosophical Question ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Essential Connection

In his early Freiburg lectures on the phenomenology of religious life, published as his Phenomenology of Religious Life, Heidegger sought to interpret the Christian life in phenomenological terms, while also discussing the question of whether Christianity should be construed as historically defined. Heidegger thus connected the philosophical discussion of religion as a phenomenon with the character of the religious life taken in the context of factical life. According to Heidegger, every philosophical question originates from the latter, which determines such questions pre-theoretically, while the tradition of early Christianity can also only be understood historically in such terms. More specifically, he holds that the historical phenomenon of religious life as it relates to early Christianity, inasmuch as it undergirds our conception of the religious phenomenon per se, reveals the essential connection between factical life and religious life. In this way, the conception of religion that Heidegger establishes through his analyses of Paul’s Epistles takes on both theological and philosophical ramifications. Moreover, the historicity of factical life finds its fulfillment in our comprehension of the primordial form of Christianity as our very own historical a priori, determined by our own factical situation. Hence, historicity and factical life belong together within the situation that makes up the foundation of the religious life.

scholarly journals NEUROMUSCULAR CHANGES WITH AGING AND SARCOPENIA

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
B.C. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Skeletal Muscle ◽  
Muscle Mass ◽  
Muscle Function ◽  
Skeletal Muscle Mass ◽  
The Past ◽  
Conceptual Definition ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
And Function

Sarcopenia was originally conceptualized as the age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass. Over the ensuing decades, the conceptual definition of sarcopenia has changed to represent a condition in older adults that is characterized by declining muscle mass and function, with “function” most commonly conceived as muscle weakness and/or impaired physical performance (e.g., slow gait speed). Findings over the past 15-years, however, have demonstrated that changes in grip and leg extensor strength are not primarily due to muscle atrophy per se, and that to a large extent, are reflective of declines in the integrity of the nervous system. This article briefly summarizes findings relating to the complex neuromuscular mechanisms that contribute to reductions in muscle function associated with advancing age, and the implications of these findings on the development of effective therapies.

scholarly journals Democratic Legitimacy between Port-au-Prince and Cairo: A Reply to Erika de Wet

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 208-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jure Vidmar
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political System ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
Normative Force ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Definition Of

In the 1990s, international legal scholarship was marked by democratic idealism and the belief that democracy had become the only legitimate political system. The more radical proposals even speculated about legality of pro-democratic intervention. Such re-conceptualizations of international law were met with determined criticism. However, even skeptical voices were willing to admit that democracy nevertheless did have some limited normative force in post-Cold War international law. While it would be an exaggeration to say that nondemocratic governments are illegitimate per se, a consensus started to emerge that international law prohibited at least a coup against a democratic government. In the absence of a workable definition of substantive democracy for international law purposes, a democratic government was understood as an authority which comes to power in an electoral process that is reasonably free and fair.

If...Then

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taina Bucher
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social World ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Ranking Data ◽  
Relational Agency ◽  
Multiple Realities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Definition Of

IF … THEN provides an account of power and politics in the algorithmic media landscape that pays attention to the multiple realities of algorithms, and how these relate and coexist. The argument is made that algorithms do not merely have power and politics; they help to produce certain forms of acting and knowing in the world. In processing, classifying, sorting, and ranking data, algorithms are political in that they help to make the world appear in certain ways rather than others. Analyzing Facebook’s news feed, social media user’s everyday encounters with algorithmic systems, and the discourses and work practices of news professionals, the book makes a case for going beyond the narrow, technical definition of algorithms as step-by-step procedures for solving a problem in a finite number of steps. Drawing on a process-relational theoretical framework and empirical data from field observations and fifty-five interviews, the author demonstrates how algorithms exist in multiple ways beyond code. The analysis is concerned with the world-making capacities of algorithms, questioning how algorithmic systems shape encounters and orientations of different kinds, and how these systems are endowed with diffused personhood and relational agency. IF … THEN argues that algorithmic power and politics is neither about algorithms determining how the social world is fabricated nor about what algorithms do per se. Rather it is about how and when different aspects of algorithms and the algorithmic become available to specific actors, under what circumstance, and who or what gets to be part of how algorithms are defined.

Paradigm Function Morphology: Assumptions and Innovations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Stump
Keyword(s):  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Formal Representation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Recent Innovation ◽  
Morphological Theory ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Fundamental Insight ◽  
Definition Of

Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM) is an evolving approach to modeling morphological systems in a precise and enlightening way. The fundamental insight of PFM is that words have both content and form and that in the context of an appropriately organized lexicon, a language’s morphology deduces a complex word’s form from its content. PFM is therefore a realizational theory: a language’s grammar and lexicon are assumed to provide a precise characterization of a word’s content, from which the language’s morphology then projects the corresponding form. Morphemes per se have no role in this theory; by contrast, paradigms have the essential role of defining the content that is realized by a language’s morphology. At the core of PFM is the notion of a paradigm function, a formal representation of the relation between a word’s content and its form; the definition of a language’s paradigm function is therefore the definition of its inflectional morphology. Recent elaborations of this idea assume a distinction between content paradigms and form paradigms, which makes it possible to account for a fact that is otherwise irreconcilable with current morphological theory—the fact that the set of morphosyntactic properties that determines a word’s syntax and semantics often differs from the set of properties (some of them morphomic) that determines a word’s inflectional form. Another recent innovation is the assumption that affixes and rules of morphology may be complex in the sense that they may be factored into smaller affixes and rules; the evidence favoring this assumption is manifold.

scholarly journals The erosion of nongambling spheres by smartphone gambling: A qualitative study on workplace and domestic disordered gambling

2020 ◽  
pp. 205015792095212
Author(s):  
Hibai Lopez-Gonzalez ◽  
Susana Jiménez-Murcia ◽  
Mark D Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Gambling Disorder ◽  
Gambling Behavior ◽  
Internet Gambling ◽  
Disordered Gambling ◽  
Problem Gamblers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Group Settings ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Related Harm

The potential dangers of internet-based gambling as compared with more traditional land-based gambling have been increasingly investigated over the past decade. The general consensus appears to be that although internet gambling might not be a more dangerous medium for gambling per se, the 24/7 availability it generates for problem gamblers, however, is. Because smartphones have become the most used way of gambling online, internet gambling must, therefore, be further subcategorized according to the device by which it is accessed. This study examines the issue by exploring the views of smartphone gamblers undergoing treatment for gambling disorder in focus group settings ( N=35). Utilizing thematic analysis, the paper shows that smartphone gambling has colonized spaces previously regarded as nongambling spheres. The workplace, especially in male-dominated contexts, emerged as an accommodator and stimulator of gambling behavior, raising issues of productivity rather than criminality. Domestic gambling was mostly characterized by an invasion of bathroom and bedtime spheres of intimacy. The study examines the implications of prevention and treatment, focusing on the minimization of exposure to gambling stimuli, the erosion of intimacy that recovering gamblers must endure, and the necessity of embracing a broader definition of gambling-related harm.

Interpreting anaphoric expressions: a cognitive versus a pragmatic approach

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Ariel
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Actual Data ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Distribution Of Zeros ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Mental Entity ◽  
Gricean Maxims ◽  
Natural Discourse

Levinson (1985, 1987a & b, 1991) and Ariel (1985a & b, 1987, 1988a & b, 1990a, 1991) have each proposed to anchor discourse and sentential anaphora within a more general theory of communication. Levinson chose a general, extra-linguistic pragmatic theory. He uses Grice's Quantity maxim to account for the distribution of zeros, reflexives, pronouns and lexical NPs, claiming that coreferent readings are preferred, unless a disjoint reading is implicated (by the revised Gricean maxims he offers). I have proposed a specifically linguistic, cognitive theory, whereby speakers guide addressees' retrievals of mental representations corresponding to all definite NPs (coreferent as well as disjoint) by signalling to them the degree of Accessibility associated with the intended mental entity in their memory. An examination of actual data reveals that Levinson's predictions regarding definite NP interpretations are often not borne out. In addition, his proposals cannot account for many anaphoric patterns actually found in natural discourse. Accessibility theory, it is argued, can account for both types of problematic data.

scholarly journals Needs, Rights and Democratic Renewal

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Ife
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Professional Category ◽  
Shared Humanity ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Strengths Approach

The way in which a discourse of human needs has been appropriated by neo-liberal perspectives within modernity is well-documented. The construction and definition of “needs” by professionals has been criticised as “the dictatorship of needs”, and has readily excluded people other than professionals and managers from the definition of need. Need becomes objectified, something to be “assessed” by professionals using expert methodologies, rather than involving democratic participation. Here need becomes another excluding professional category, apparently objective and value-free, but in reality ideological. Furthermore, the deficit approach inherent in the idea of “need” runs counter to the more positive “strengths” approach of social work. “Rights” as an alternative to “needs” is superficially a more empowering discourse, and moving from a needs-based to a rights-based approach is therefore intuitively seductive, and has evidently appealed to social workers. However, ideas of “rights”, and especially “human rights” are also embedded within modernity and the privileging of the expert. The conventional discourse of human rights as defined by the UN or other legal bodies, applied universally, and protected through laws and legal institutions, is a negation of any democratic understanding of rights. “Human rights”, like need, thus becomes an objectified discourse of the powerful about the powerless. However the idea of human rights, if constructed from within a more postmodern framing, has the potential to move our understanding of a shared humanity beyond the constraints of modernity. Thus human rights per se is an inadequate, and potentially dangerous, formulation for progressive social work, unless democratic participation is restored to the human rights project. If human rights are understood as being embedded in a community of reciprocal rights and responsibilities, rather than as “things” possessed by individuals, human rights from below can become a powerful framework for the democratic renewal of practice.

scholarly journals Hate speech operationalization: a preliminary examination of hate speech indicators and their structure

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Papcunová ◽  
Marcel Martončik ◽  
Denisa Fedáková ◽  
Michal Kentoš ◽  
Miroslava Bozogáňová ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Violent Behavior ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Preliminary Examination ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Speech Assessment ◽  
Practical Implications

AbstractHate speech should be tackled and prosecuted based on how it is operationalized. However, the existing theoretical definitions of hate speech are not sufficiently fleshed out or easily operable. To overcome this inadequacy, and with the help of interdisciplinary experts, we propose an empirical definition of hate speech by providing a list of 10 hate speech indicators and the rationale behind them (the indicators refer to specific, observable, and measurable characteristics that offer a practical definition of hate speech). A preliminary exploratory examination of the structure of hate speech, with the focus on comments related to migrants (one of the most reported grounds of hate speech), revealed that two indicators in particular, denial of human rights and promoting violent behavior, occupy a central role in the network of indicators. Furthermore, we discuss the practical implications of the proposed hate speech indicators—especially (semi-)automatic detection using the latest natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) methods. Having a set of quantifiable indicators could benefit researchers, human right activists, educators, analysts, and regulators by providing them with a pragmatic approach to hate speech assessment and detection.

scholarly journals The Politics of Vulnerability in Refugee Admissions Under the EU-Turkey Statement

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Welfens ◽  
Yasemin Bekyol
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Selection Practices

Resettlement and humanitarian admission programs claim to target ‘particularly vulnerable’, or ‘the most vulnerable’ refugees. If the limited spots of such programs are indeed foreseen for particularly vulnerable groups and individuals, as resettlement actors claim, how is vulnerability defined in policies and put into practice at the frontline? Taking European states’ recent admission programs under the EU-Turkey statement as an example, and focusing on Germany as an admission country, this research note sheds light on this question. Drawing on document analysis, and original fieldwork insights, we show that on paper and in practice vulnerability as a policy category designates some social groups as per se more vulnerable than others, rather than accounting for contingent reasons of vulnerability. In policy documents, the operational definition of vulnerability and its relation to other criteria remain largely undefined. In selection practices, additional criteria curtail a purely vulnerability-based selection, exacerbate existing or create new vulnerabilities in their own right. We conclude that, in the absence of clear definitions, resettlement and humanitarian admission programs’ declared focus on the most vulnerable remains a discretionary promise, with limited possibilities of political and legal scrutiny.

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