Aristotle on the Distinctness of Practical Reason

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. M. Olfert
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Technical Reason ◽  
Easy Answer ◽  
Distinct Kind ◽  
The Many ◽  
In Virtue Of

Aristotle famously holds that practical reason is different from other kinds of reason, including theoretical and technical reason. But in virtue of what is it different? On a standard interpretation, which I call the “Objects View,” Aristotle holds that practical reason is distinct because it thinks about a distinct kind of object or subject matter: it thinks about things that can be brought about or affected by our actions. But this view is unsatisfying. Why, we might wonder, should we need an entirely different kind of reason in order to think about a specific kind of object? As my account of practical truth shows, there is an easy answer to this objection. Aristotle does not distinguish practical reason from other kinds of reason by the object it thinks about. I explain the many difficulties with the Objects View as an interpretation of Aristotle in this chapter.

scholarly journals Reactivity in social scientific experiments: what is it and how is it different (and worse) than a Placebo effect?

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
María Jiménez-Buedo
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Placebo Effect ◽  
Placebo Effects ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
Scientific Experiments ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
In Virtue Of

AbstractReactivity, or the phenomenon by which subjects tend to modify their behavior in virtue of their being studied upon, is often cited as one of the most important difficulties involved in social scientific experiments, and yet, there is to date a persistent conceptual muddle when dealing with the many dimensions of reactivity. This paper offers a conceptual framework for reactivity that draws on an interventionist approach to causality. The framework allows us to offer an unambiguous definition of reactivity and distinguishes it from placebo effects. Further, it allows us to distinguish between benign and malignant forms of the phenomenon, depending on whether reactivity constitutes a danger to the validity of the causal inferences drawn from experimental data.

Abelard, Peter (1079–1142)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin M. Tweedale
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Moral Ideals ◽  
Rational Argumentation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Many ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

Among the many scholars who promoted the revival of learning in western Europe in the early twelfth century, Abelard stands out as a consummate logician, a formidable polemicist and a champion of the value of ancient pagan wisdom for Christian thought. Although he worked within the Aristotelian tradition, his logic deviates significantly from that of Aristotle, particularly in its emphasis on propositions and what propositions say. According to Abelard, the subject matter of logic, including universals such as genera and species, consists of linguistic expressions, not of the things these expressions talk about. However, the objective grounds for logical relationships lie in what these expressions signify, even though they cannot be said to signify any things. Abelard is, then, one of a number of medieval thinkers, often referred to in later times as ‘nominalists’, who argued against turning logic and semantics into some sort of science of the ‘real’, a kind of metaphysics. It was Abelard’s view that logic was, along with grammar and rhetoric, one of the sciences of language. In ethics, Abelard defended a view in which moral merit and moral sin depend entirely on whether one’s intentions express respect for the good or contempt for it, and not at all on one’s desires, whether the deed is actually carried out, or even whether the deed is in fact something that ought or ought not be done. Abelard did not believe that the doctrines of Christian faith could be proved by logically compelling arguments, but rational argumentation, he thought, could be used both to refute attacks on Christian doctrine and to provide arguments that would appeal to those who were attracted to high moral ideals. With arguments of this latter sort, he defended the rationalist positions that nothing occurs without a reason and that God cannot do anything other than what he does do.

Class Actions in the United States and Israel: A Comparative Approach

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alon Klement ◽  
Robert Klonoff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Action ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Class Actions ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Many ◽  
Action Procedure

Abstract Unlike most countries, the United States and Israel have employed the class action procedure for decades. This Article compares the two countries’ class action regimes and examines how the device has evolved in those countries. It examines the current procedures, as well as proposed reforms. It also compares class action statistics in the two countries relating to filings and outcomes. We demonstrate the many common features between the United States and Israeli class action procedures. As we illustrate, these common features have led to robust class action practices in both countries. At the same time, there are profound differences between the types of class actions filed and their outcomes. Thus, while Israel has many more class actions than the United States on a per capita basis, the cases are much less consequential from a monetary and subject matter perspective. We explore possible explanations for these observations. Furthermore, this study identifies features — utilized by the United States and Israel — that can serve as models for other countries that are adopting or amending their own class action regimes.

Performative Force, Convention, and Discursive Injustice

Hypatia ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 440-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Kukla
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Social Disadvantage ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
Complete Control ◽  
Disadvantaged Group ◽  
In Virtue Of

AbstractI explore how gender can shape the pragmatics of speech. In some circumstances, when a woman deploys standard discursive conventions in order to produce a speech act with a specific performative force, her utterance can turn out, in virtue of its uptake, to have a quite different force—a less empowering force—than it would have if performed by a man. When members of a disadvantaged group face a systematic inability to produce a specific kind of speech act that they are entitled to perform—and in particular when their attempts result in their actually producing a different kind of speech act that further compromises their social position and agency—then they are victims of what I call discursive injustice. I examine three examples of discursive injustice. I contrast my account with Langton and Hornsby's account of illocutionary silencing. I argue that lack of complete control over the performative force of our speech acts is universal, and not a special marker of social disadvantage. However, women and other relatively disempowered speakers are sometimes subject to a distinctive distortion of the path from speaking to uptake, which undercuts their social agency in ways that track and enhance existing social disadvantages.

scholarly journals Three Major Difficulties in the Learning of Demonstrative Geometry

1940 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-134
Author(s):  
Rolland R. Smith
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Young Person ◽  
School Age ◽  
Good Teacher ◽  
Experienced Teacher ◽  
Lecture Method ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many ◽  
Successful Teaching

Efficient and successful teaching of demonstrative geometry in the senior high school requires on the part of the teacher much more than a knowledge of the subject matter. The young person who goes into the geometry classroom after leaving college with honors in mathematics is not necessarily a good teacher. Unless he has been forewarned in one way or another, he is likely to resort to the lecture method which his professors have used in college and then find to his surprise that his pupils have learned little. He may have taken courses in which he studied the general laws of learning as applied to pupils of high school age, but even so he will have difficulty in translating his knowledge to fit the specific requirements of the classroom. Part of his training may have been to observe the work of a highly efficient, successful, and artistic teacher whom he may try to imitate. He will find, however, that he has not been keen enough to grasp the meaning and purpose of many of the techniques. Not knowing beforehand how a group of pupils will react to a given situation, he fails to see when and how the experienced teacher has avoided pitfalls by introducing many details of development not necessarily needed in the finished product but indispensable to the learning process. Before he can become adept in preparing a course of study or planning his everyday lessons, he needs to know what difficulties pupils will have with the many component tasks which when integrated fulfill the desired aim. A teacher can plan a skillful development only when he has reached a point where he can predict within reasonable limits what the reactions of a group of pupils will be.

scholarly journals A Phenomenological Reading of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joaquin Trujillo
Keyword(s):  
Wave Function ◽  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Measurement Problem ◽  
Copenhagen Interpretation ◽  
Interpretation Of Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Many Worlds ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Hermeneutic Phenomenological ◽  
Many Worlds Interpretation ◽  
The Many

The articles provides a phenomenological reading of the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics and its answer to the measurement problem, or the question of “why only one of a wave function’s probable values is observed when the system is measured.” Transcendental-phenomenological and hermeneutic-phenomenological approaches are employed. The project comprises four parts. Parts one and two review MWI and the standard (Copenhagen) interpretation of quantum mechanics. Part three reviews the phenomenologies. Part four deconstructs the hermeneutics of MWI. It agrees with the confidence the theory derives from its (1) unforgiving appropriation of the Schrödinger equation and (2) association of branching universes with the evolution of the wave function insofar as that understanding comes from the formalism itself. Part four also reveals the hermeneutical shortcomings of the standard interpretation.

scholarly journals Analytic Theology and Analytic Philosophy of Religion: What’s the difference?

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 347-361
Author(s):  
Max Baker-Hytch
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Or Methodology ◽  
The Difference ◽  
In Virtue Of

Analytic theology is often seen as an outgrowth of analytic philosophy of religion. It isn’t fully clear, however, whether it differs from analytic philosophy of religion in some important way. Is analytic theology really just a sub-field of analytic philosophy of religion, or can it be distinguished from the latter in virtue of fundamental differences at the level of subject matter or methodology? These are pressing questions for the burgeoning field of analytic theology. The aim of this article, then, will be to map out several forms that analytic theology might (and in some cases actually does) take before examining the extent to which each can be thought to be distinct from analytic philosophy of religion.

scholarly journals Rational Requirements and the Primacy of Pressure

Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (516) ◽  
pp. 1033-1070 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Fogal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard View ◽  
Rational Requirements ◽  
Substantive Rationality ◽  
Structural Relations ◽  
Distinct Kind ◽  
The Right ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Rational Evaluation

Abstract There are at least two threads in our thought and talk about rationality, both practical and theoretical. In one sense, to be rational is to respond correctly to the reasons one has. Call this substantive rationality. In another sense, to be rational is to be coherent, or to have the right structural relations hold between one's attitudinal mental states, independently of whether those states are justified. Call this structural rationality. According to the standard view, structural rationality is associated with a distinctive set of requirements that mandate or prohibit certain combinations of attitudes, and it's in virtue of violating these requirements that incoherent agents are irrational. I think the standard view is mistaken. The goal of this paper is to explain why, and to motivate an alternative account: rather than corresponding to a set of law-like requirements, structural rationality should be seen as corresponding to a distinctive kind of pro tanto rational pressure—that is, something that comes in degrees, having both magnitude and direction. Something similar is standardly assumed to be true of substantive rationality. On the resulting picture, each dimension of rational evaluation is associated with a distinct kind of rational pressure—substantive rationality with (what I call) justificatory pressure and structural rationality with attitudinal pressure. The former is generated by one's reasons while the latter is generated by one's attitudes. Requirements turn out to be at best a footnote in the theory of rationality.

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Philip V. Bohlman
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
World Music ◽  
World Religions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many

Over the course of more than two centuries modern readers have returned to Johann Gottfried Herder’s writings because of the wide-ranging influence on the many areas of thought that are foundational to modern intellectual history. In this prologue, Herder’s contributions to theological writings from world religions provide touchstones for the foundations of world music in intellectual history. His studies of Christianity and Judaism, as well as early Hindu writings, become common historical subject matter, joined through translation and the widespread presence of music in seminal texts. The prologue identifies the ways in which Herder’s universal thought leads to a new aesthetic and ontology of music, combining the object of song with the subject of singing.

Coalitional Politics on the US-Mexico Border

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karma R. Chávez
Keyword(s):  
Local State ◽  
Divide And Conquer ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
Derechos Humanos ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
The Many ◽  
Coalitional Politics ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter offers an extended look at two Tucson-based organizations, Wingspan and Coalición de Derechos Humanos (CDH), both of which have an avowed coalition to jointly fight oppression. The groups have constructed a coalition that refuses the master's tool of divide and conquer by actively taking up the many forms of difference in the service of coalition. Sometimes venturing into both normative and utopian realms with their tactical strategies, the activism of Wingspan and CDH starkly reveals the fraught nature of coalition. This coalition provides insight into the specific kind of strategies that local groups can utilize to foster unlikely political coalitions and educate communities in order to shift local, state, and national ways of thinking, even as these strategies are imperfect and sometimes fail.

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