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.

Darwin's Argument by Analogy

In On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as well as on in-depth studies of Darwin's public and private writings, this book offers an original perspective on Darwin's argument, restoring to view the intellectual traditions which Darwin took for granted in arguing as he did. From this perspective come new appreciations not only of Darwin's argument but of the metaphors based on it, the range of wider traditions the argument touched upon, and its legacies for science after the Origin.

Against Analogy

This article asks whether the analogy between state and firm is a promising strategy for promoting workplace democracy and provides a negative answer, explaining why analogical arguments are not a good strategy for justifying workplace democracy. The article contends that the state-firm analogy is misguided for at least three reasons: (1) it is structurally inconclusive, (2) it is based on a category mistake, and (3) it leads us away from the central question we should ask, which is: What would concretely imply, and what is required, in order to democratize the workplace? I begin by offering an interpretation of the state-firm analogy which shows that use of the analogical argument in Dahl’s justification of workplace democracy engenders excessive and unnecessary theoretical costs which bear negatively on his conclusion. I then proceed to examine more recent contributions to the debate and show that supporters and critics of the state-firm analogy alike do not advance our understanding of the analogical argument. In the last part of the article I provide a general theoretical explanation of why arguments based on the state-firm analogy are not good candidates for defending workplace democracy.

共同體與個體在現代時期的幸福

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract in English only.Based on analogical argument, Professor Hans-Martin Sass argues that collective and individual bodies are not independent but interconnected as natural bodies. He worries about modern scientific technologies that aggravate the diseases of the body. I agree with Prof. Sass in many respects but emphasize that modern technology is not the key to the problem. Whether in ancient times or modern times, we have to restate that the ultimate end of life is happiness rather than benefit and that the instrument to pursue happiness is virtue rather than any kind of technology. DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 5 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Cavendish vs. Descartes on Mechanism and Animal Souls

In the Discourse on the Method, Descartes attempts to prove that animals are mere machines, lacking reason and, by extension, consciousness. This chapter explores the response to this position offered by Margaret Cavendish in her 1664 Philosophical Letters. Following a reconstruction of the analogical argument Cavendish constructs to refute the Cartesian position, there is an examination of Cavendish’s metaphysical views in contrast to Descartes’s, revealing the sharp divide between these two thinkers on questions related to the nature of matter, the intelligibility of mechanical explanations in nature, the proper conception of reason, and the relationship between human beings and the natural world.

Dworkin’s Literary Analogy

For decades Ronald Dworkin defended the view that legal interpretation is constructive. One of his most fascinating arguments for this idea, which turns on an analogy between legal and literary interpretation, has been more or less ignored by philosophers of law—probably because they have not been especially interested in the claims about literary interpretation that it presupposes. This chapter explores Dworkin's analogical argument with the sensitivity it deserves, and with particular attention to its controversial ideas about the interpretation of literature. The chapter evaluates the implications of Dworkin’s analogy for his overall anti-positivist project, and for one’s thinking about legal interpretation more generally.

The Transcendental Argument of the Novel

ABSTRACT:Can fictional narration yield knowledge in a way that depends crucially on its being fictional? This is the hard question of literary cognitivism. It is unexceptional that knowledge can be gained from fictional literature in ways that are not dependent on its fictionality (e.g., the science in science fiction). Sometimes fictional narratives are taken to exhibit the structure of suppositional argument, sometimes analogical argument. Of course, neither structure is unique to narratives. The thesis of literary cognitivism would be supported if some novels exhibit a cogent and special argument structure restricted to fictional narratives. I contend that this is the case for a kind of transcendental argument. The reason is the inclusion and pattern of occurrence of the predicate ‘believable’ in the schema. Believability with respect to fictional stories is quite a different thing than it is with respect to nonfictional stories or anything else.

On Novels as Arguments

If novels can be arguments, that fact should shape logic or argumentation studies as well as literary studies. Two senses the term ‘narrative argument’ might have are (a) a story that offers an argument, or (b) a distinctive argument form. I consider whether there is a principled way of extracting a novel’s argument in sense (a). Regarding the possibility of (b), Hunt’s view is evaluated that many fables and much fabulist literature inherently, and as wholes, have an analogical argument structure. I argue that a better account is that some novels inherently exhibit a transcendental argument structure.