Conceivability Errors and the Role of Imagination in Symbolization

n the years 1675-84, Leibniz sought to disprove Descartes’s account of clear and distinct perception by implementing a three-step argumentative strategy. The first part of the paper reconstructs the argument and highlights what aspects of Descartes’s epistemology it addresses. The reconstruction shows that the argument is based on conceivability errors. These are a kind of symbolic cognition that prove Descartes’s clear and distinct perception as introspectively indistinguishable from Leibniz’s symbolic cognition. The second part of the paper explores the epistemic implication of the indistinguishability between clear and distinct perception and symbolic cognition: the mind constitutively depends on products of the imagination. My conclusion addresses the role of the imagination in symbolization. Symbolization does not exceed imagination; it rather is an idealized use of cognitive surrogates, like characters, to submit to the imagination what is not subject to it.

Myles Brand: Intecollegiate Athletics Within the Limits of the Academic Mission Alone

During his NCAA presidency, Myles Brand led novel academic reforms that gained deserved national recognition, but his defense of the educational and academic value of IA should be equally acknowledged since this was, for Brand, the ultimate reason why universities should support intercollegiate athletics (IA) in the first place. In this article, I describe the development of Brand’s view of the educational value of IA that preceded his signature 2006 publication ‘The Role and Value of Intercollegiate Athletics in Universities.’ I then explain Brand’s Integrated View of IA in his 2006 article and focus on his key argumentative strategy: the analogy of the educational value of IA to the educational value of performing arts like music and dance. I contend that Brand did not bring his persuasive analogical argument to its full logical conclusions since IA should contribute to a new academic major in Sport Performance and some of the very character virtues that Brand identified as developed ideally by IA are now recognized as essential academic liberal learning outcomes. I conclude by raising some criticisms of Brand’s view based on the organizational framework and policies of IA that create difficulties for the full realization of its educational value. Nonetheless, at a momentous time in U.S. higher education when university priorities and budgets are under perhaps unprecedented scrutiny, Brand’s insistence that IA must be integrated with the academic mission is more relevant than ever.

Tracing Cultural Values in Thai Students’ Dialogical Argumentation

Critical thinking and argumentation skills are crucial for developing responsible citizens and active participants in society. Indeed, reasoning and argumentation are known to be exercised differently in distinctive cultures. Historical, cultural and institutional contexts shape the way people in a society think, communicate and act. In this regard, the predominant Western assumption that reasoning should be detachable from emotion may not necessarily be accurate within the Thai cultural context. This paper highlights how different cultural assumptions were displayed in dialogical argumentation in English for fourteen, first-year undergraduates of the English Programme at a Thai university. The analysis of the argumentation data indicated that some participants presented their claims close to the end of their argumentative turns. In addition, personal experience was regularly employed as an argumentative strategy. Interestingly, there was also an absence of claims in some argumentative turns. The aforementioned findings and the themes derived from an analysis of the semi-structured interview data reflect some specific characteristics of Thai culture and values. They include indirectness and a desire for harmony, a subjectivity in argumentation and modesty.

Tracing Cultural Values in Thai Students’ Dialogical Argumentation

Critical thinking and argumentation skills are crucial for developing responsible citizens and active participants in society. Indeed, reasoning and argumentation are known to be exercised differently in distinctive cultures. Historical, cultural and institutional contexts shape the way people in a society think, communicate and act. In this regard, the predominant Western assumption that reasoning should be detachable from emotion may not necessarily be accurate within the Thai cultural context. This paper highlights how different cultural assumptions were displayed in dialogical argumentation in English for fourteen, first-year undergraduates of the English Programme at a Thai university. The analysis of the argumentation data indicated that some participants presented their claims close to the end of their argumentative turns. In addition, personal experience was regularly employed as an argumentative strategy. Interestingly, there was also an absence of claims in some argumentative turns. The aforementioned findings and the themes derived from an analysis of the semi-structured interview data reflect some specific characteristics of Thai culture and values. They include indirectness and a desire for harmony, a subjectivity in argumentation and modesty.

OS TRECHOS DESCONEXOS EM REDAÇÕES DO ENEM

This work discusses the possible functions of disconnected excerpts in essays of the Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (ENEM) [National High School Exam]. To ground our reflections, we resume the concepts of genre (BAKHTIN, 2006, 2011), genre format subversion (MARCUSCHI, 2008), and incoherence (KOCH; TRAVAGLIA, 2008). In the analysis, we compare the effects that the use of disconnected excerpts caused in three ENEM essays to the effects in two other genres, a petition and a blog post. We raise three possible functions for the insertion of these excerpts: that this may be an argumentative strategy; that the author reacts to the probable readers’ attention loss; and that the author tests the dialogical character of the essay. We conclude that the use of these excerpts in ENEM does not necessarily make texts incoherent, but the condition of textual production demands a greater stability of the genre’s format.

ARGUMENTATIVE STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION IN THE SPANISH POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF THE 2019 PRE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN

Purpose. The article deals with identifying effective language means and techniques which form the basis of polarization, solidarity and positive prospect describing tactics that the argumentative strategy is realized through in speeches, debates and interviews of such Spain’s political leaders as Pedro Sánchez, Pablo Casado and Santiago Abascal. Methodology. The study is based on an integrated approach to the analysis of political discourse, combining communicative and pragmatic, semantic and cognitive as well as contextual analyses which allow determining speaker’s communicative and pragmatic intentions, detect the axiological component of language units meaning and their possible interpretations by national conceptual sphere hosts in the relevant linguistic and situational context.Results. The study analyzes the means of the argumentative strategy creation in the campaign speeches of Spanish leading political parties’ leaders, in their interviews and debates. The predominance of tactics of positive prospects description, polarization and solidarity were identified. The research characterizes the peculiarities of lexical, grammatical and stylistic units’ combining, taking into account the nationally determined specificity of lexical units’ meaning, which verbalize the demanded concepts of the national conceptual sphere of Spain. The analysis of the 2019 pre-election campaign discourse has allowed identifying of such specific features of the argumentative strategy as focusing on the future, emphasizing their own achievements and opponents’ shortcomings, desire to reduce the distance between the speaker and the addressee. The focus on the future context is embodied in the tactic of positive prospects description where grammatical and lexical units should indicate the clarity and certainty of politician’s position. The tactic of polarization, characterized by the use of antonymous lexical units, allows politicians to present favorably their own candidacy and negatively affect opponents’ image. The need to convince voters is transferred into in the tactic of solidarity consisting in the use of lexical units that indicate the convergence of views and belonging of the speaker and the addressee to the same community.Conclusions. The analysis of peculiarities of argumentative strategy realization in the Spanish political discourse demonstrates the effectiveness of such frequently used communicative tactics as positive prospects description, polarization and solidarity. They are based on the selection of lexical, grammatical and stylistic units, taking into account the situational and pragmatic context as well as national and axiological dominants of Spaniard’s world view.Key words: political discourse, pragmatics, communicative strategy, tactic, axiologemes, semantic and cognitive interpretation, linguistic context, conceptual sphere. Мета. Метою статті є виявлення ефективних засобів та прийомів у тактиках окреслення позитивної перспективи, протиставлення та солідаризації, за допомогою яких реалізується аргументативна стратегія у промовах, дебатах та інтерв’ю політичних лідерів Іспанії, зокрема Педро Санчеса, Пабло Касадо та Сантьяго Абаскаля. Методи. Дослідження базується на комплексному підході до аналізу політичного дискурсу, у якому поєднано комунікативно-прагматичний, семантико-когнітивний і контекстуальний аналізи, що забезпечують визначення комунікативно-прагматичних намірів мовця, встановлення аксіологічного компоненту значення використаних мовних одиниць і їх можливі інтер-претації носіями національної концептосфери у відповідному мовному та ситуативному контексті.Результати. У межах дослідження було проаналізовано засоби реалізації аргументативної стратегії у передвиборчих про-мовах лідерів трьох провідних політичних партій Іспанії, інтерв’ю та дебатах за їх участю, виокремлено переважання тактики окреслення позитивної перспективи, протиставлення, солідаризації та описано особливості поєднання обраних політиками лексичних, граматичних і стилістичних одиниць із урахуванням національно детермінованої специфіки значення лексичних одиниць, що вербалізують затребувані концепти національної концептосфери Іспанії. Аналіз дискурсу передвиборчої кампа-нії 2019 року дозволив визначити специфічні риси аргументативної стратегії: спрямованість на майбутнє, акцент на власних досягненнях та недоліках опонентів, прагнення скоротити дистанцію між мовцем та адресатом. Орієнтованість на майбутній контекст втілюється у тактиці окреслення позитивної перспективи за допомогою використання граматичних та лексичних засобів, що позначають чіткість та визначеність позиції політика. Тактика протиставлення, що характеризується вживанням антонімічних лексичних засобів, дозволяє політичним діячам вигідно представити власну кандидатуру та негативно вплинути на імідж опонентів. Необхідність переконати виборців втілюється в тактиці солідаризації, що полягає у використанні лексич-них одиниць, які вказують на близькість поглядів і приналежність мовця й адресата до єдиного цілого.Висновки. Проведений аналіз особливостей реалізації аргументативної стратегії в іспанському політичному дискурсі свідчить про ефективність трьох основних комунікативних тактик: окреслення позитивної перспективи, протиставлення та солідаризації, добір лексичних, граматичних та стилістичних засобів побудови яких базується на врахуванні ситуативно-прагматичного контексту та національно аксіологічних домінант іспанського світогляду.Ключові слова: політичний дискурс,прагматика, комунікативна стратегія, тактика, аксіологема, семантико-когнітивна інтерпретація, мовний контекст, концептосфера.

The case for biotechnological exceptionalism

Do biomedical interventions raise special moral concerns? A rising number of prominent authors claim that at least in the case of biomedical enhancement they do not. Treating biomedical enhancements different from non-biomedical ones, they claim, amounts to unjustified biomedical exceptionalism. This article vindicates the familiar thesis that biomedical enhancement raises specific concerns. Taking a close look at the argumentative strategy against biomedical exceptionalism and provides counterexamples showing that the biomedical mode of interventions raises concerns not relevant otherwise. In particular, biomedical interventions throughout raise concerns of informed consent, which only rarely turn up in comparable non-biomedical interventions.

A retórica do capítulo IX do tratado Da Interpretação

This paper analyses the argumentative strategy of the ninth chapter of the treatise De Interpretatione in the light of Aristotle's Rhetoric. The subject of the ‘future events’ developed in chapter IX brings up themes that are proper not only to philosophical thought, but also to political practice, forensic rhetoric, deliberative rhetoric and even tragic poetry. In this paper, it is argued that Aristotle uses the dialectical method and certain rhetorical techniques to touch the various discussions related to the subject addressed. He erects a hypothetical adversary and a thesis to refute, condensing some positions that were probably scattered in the most diverse textual and oratory sources of his time. Moreover, he builds the thesis of his hypothetical opponent from premises established in previous chapters of his own treatise. With this, he can simulate the defense of his opponent's thesis before demolishing it. Thus, according to the hypothesis defended here, the philosopher does not in fact commit himself to the arguments presented between 18a35 and 18b25, but only simulates the defense of the reasoning which he will soon refute. In addition, it is also concluded that chapter IX is part of the argumentative chain of the treatise, having as a peculiar characteristic, not the theme or nature of the arguments exposed, but the rhetorical method it employs.

Interim Conclusions

This chapter summarizes the previous findings and exposes the false dichotomies that led to the proliferation of the different conceptualizations. It shows how the four conceptualizations can be applied to a legal dispute concerning the responsibility of an international organization. In particular, it discusses the Al-Dulimi case before the European Court of Human Rights. The circumstances of the case prompt the adoption of one or the other conceptualization on the basis of the argumentative strategy. The analysis highlights the difficulties in providing a general legal framework to establish the responsibility of international organizations and/or of their member states. The chapter is divided into two subsections, focusing on the admissibility and the merits of the Al-Dulimi case. It concludes that the adoption of an international legal framework applicable to all international organizations is subject to the possibility to rebut limited perspectives and to adopt an ‘absolute point of view’.

Connecting racial and species justice: Towards an Afrocentric animal advocacy

Some philosophers and activists have been sceptical about the relevance of pursuing animal justice to progress racial justice. Routinely, these sceptics have argued that allying animal and racial justice struggles is politically unfeasible, counterproductive, distractive and disruptive for the achievement of racial justice. The conclusion of these sceptics is that animal justice is either a barrier or irrelevant to racial justice and, as such, activists should not ally both struggles. In this article, I wish to contest the arguments that forward the idea that these struggles should not be addressed together, especially in the case of addressing anti-Black racial injustices. I offer a negative argumentative strategy to forward my thesis; namely, I offer reasons to reject the arguments that are sceptical about the relevance of addressing animal justice to achieve progress in racial justice. I contend that racial injustice is partly fuelled by the capacity contract. The capacity contract, in turn, is intertwined with the way humans treat animals. Owing to the fact that speciesism fuels the contract that incites racism, then addressing speciesism is instrumentally relevant for overcoming racial injustices. Moreover, I demonstrate in this article that not only are there various ways that anti-racist and anti-speciesist struggles are interconnected, but also that the project of addressing them together is politically feasible and desirable.