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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Owning A Virus: The Rhetoric Of Scientific Discovery Accounts, Carol Reeves
Owning A Virus: The Rhetoric Of Scientific Discovery Accounts, Carol Reeves
Carol Reeves
No Abstract Available
"I Knew There Was Something Wrong With That Paper": Scientific Rhetorical Styles And Scientific Misunderstandings, Carol Reeves
"I Knew There Was Something Wrong With That Paper": Scientific Rhetorical Styles And Scientific Misunderstandings, Carol Reeves
Carol Reeves
This selection unpacks scientific prose and claim substantiation for Nobel Prize winner, Stan Prusiner, in the transmissible spongiform encephlopathies field (i.e., mad cow disease). Applying linguistic strategies such as M. A. K. Halliday's "favorite clause type," the author examines argumentative strategies in dense scientific prose both in bold and cautious rhetorical styles and invented lexical changes in new scientific development.
Visual Rhetoric And The Promotion Of Scientific Ideas: The Strange Case Of The Prion, Carol Reeves
Visual Rhetoric And The Promotion Of Scientific Ideas: The Strange Case Of The Prion, Carol Reeves
Carol Reeves
In the field that investigates infectious brain diseases such as mad cow disease, the verbal and visual packaging of scientific visuals associated with identifying the agent, prion, its processes, and structure served the community ritual of establishing belief in a highly unorthodox phenomenon. Visual promotion fed into cultural expectations of single agents and simple processes, even though the actual agency and disease process have proven highly complex and perhaps unknowable.
An Orthodox Heresy: Scientific Rhetoric And The Science Of Prions., Carol Reeves
An Orthodox Heresy: Scientific Rhetoric And The Science Of Prions., Carol Reeves
Carol Reeves
A significant theoretical shift in the research community examining a class of terminal, infectious neurological disorders that includes Mad Cow Disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and Kuru was assisted by rhetorical production. The local rhetoric of one laboratory, that of Professor Stanley B. Prusiner, involved first situating an heretical hypothesis within the framework of the orthodox narrative and then audaciously promoting that heresy. Another aspect of rhetorical production in this case involved situating a new language associated with the heretical hypothesis. To promote their new lexicon, the Prusiner team evoked orthodox values of consistency, efficiency, and collective ratification. Eventually, what was once …
Rhetoric And The Aids Virus Hunt, Carol Reeves
Rhetoric And The Aids Virus Hunt, Carol Reeves
Carol Reeves
By comparing the papers produced by the laboratory teams of Robert Gallo and Jean Luc Montagnier during the AIDS virus hunt, we have an opportunity to discern the fine line between a bold, explicit rhetoric that may convince as well as offend and a bald, reserved rhetoric that may actually conceal important implications. Going too far in either direction may create misunderstandings and ethical dilemmas as will be demonstrated in a textual analysis deepened by an exploration of historical context and interviews with key participants. Since a public health crisis calls upon communication that thwarts misunderstandings, scientists should understand the …
Establishing The Phenomenon: The Rhetoric Of Early Research Reports On Aids, Carol Reeves
Establishing The Phenomenon: The Rhetoric Of Early Research Reports On Aids, Carol Reeves
Carol Reeves
In the first three medical reports on AIDS which were published in 1981 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the writers' primary rhetorical agenda was to argue that a new medical discovery had been made. A secondary agenda was to offer etiological explanations for the new problem. To establish the new disease entity as deserving serious attention, the writers built a sense of mystery by confronting established medical knowledge about immunodeficiency and emphasizing the inability of modern medicine to diagnose and treat the problem. When they explained the phenomenon in etiological terms, rather than confronting the disciplinary matrix, the …
On The Relation Between Quantum Mechanical And Neo-Mechanistic Ontologies And Explanatory Strategies, Meinard Kuhlmann, Stuart Glennan
On The Relation Between Quantum Mechanical And Neo-Mechanistic Ontologies And Explanatory Strategies, Meinard Kuhlmann, Stuart Glennan
Stuart Glennan
Advocates of the New Mechanicism in philosophy of science argue that scientific explanation often consists in describing mechanisms responsible for natural phenomena. Despite its successes, one might think that this approach does not square with the ontological strictures of quantum mechanics. New Mechanists suppose that mechanisms are composed of objects with definite properties, which are interconnected via local causal interactions. Quantum mechanics calls these suppositions into question. Since mechanisms are hierarchical it appears that even macroscopic mechanisms must supervene on a set of “objects” that behave non- classically. In this paper we argue, in part by appeal to the theory …
The Nature Of Science: A Perspective From The Philosophy Of Science, Juli T. Eflin, Stuart Glennan, George Reisch
The Nature Of Science: A Perspective From The Philosophy Of Science, Juli T. Eflin, Stuart Glennan, George Reisch
Stuart Glennan
In a recent article in this journal, Brian Alters (1997) argued that, given the many ways in which the nature of science (NOS) is described and poor student responses to NOS instruments such as Nature of Scientific Knowledge Scale (NSKS), Nature of Science Scale (NOSS), Test on Understanding Science (TOUS), and others, it is time for science educators to reconsider the standard lists of tenets for the NOS. Alters suggested that philosophers of science are authorities on the NOS and that consequently, it would be wise to investigate their views of current NOS tenets. To that end, he conducted a …
Asking For Plato's Forgiveness. Floyer Sydenham: A Platonic Visionary Of 18th-Century Britain, Kyriakos N. Demetriou
Asking For Plato's Forgiveness. Floyer Sydenham: A Platonic Visionary Of 18th-Century Britain, Kyriakos N. Demetriou
Kyriakos N. Demetriou
Floyer Sydenham (1710–1787), the eminent British Platonist, has been unduly neglected in the interpretative historiography of the modern Platonic tradition. Amid a climate of indifference, he set out to offer the first complete English translation of the Platonic dialogues, begging for subscriptions that never materialized. He died in debtors’ prison on April 1, 1787. Between 1759 and 1780 he managed to translate nine dialogues incorporating a large number of explanatory notes and linguistic emendations to the existing texts. Set in the context of the intellectual and discursive tradition of the era, Sydenham’s Platonism expanded on Lord Shaftesbury’s teleological views of …
Cultural Contradictions Of The Anytime, Anywhere Economy: Reframing Communication Technology, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Detlev Zwick
Cultural Contradictions Of The Anytime, Anywhere Economy: Reframing Communication Technology, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Detlev Zwick
Nikhilesh Dholakia
Technology-aided ubiquity and instantaneity have emerged as major goals of most information technology providers and of certain classes of users such as “road warriors”. New mobile technologies promise genie-in-a-bottle type near-magical qualities with anytime, anywhere access to information and services. While the complex science, systems, and economics of such technologies receive considerable attention from industry executives and researchers, the social and cultural aspects of these technologies attract less attention. This paper explores the oft-contradictory promises and pitfalls of anytime, anywhere technologies from a cultural standpoint. It makes suggestions for reinterpreting these technologies for greater human good.
Consumer Subjectivity In The Age Of Internet: The Radical Concept Of Marketing Control Through Customer Relationship Management, Detlev Zwick, Nikhilesh Dholakia
Consumer Subjectivity In The Age Of Internet: The Radical Concept Of Marketing Control Through Customer Relationship Management, Detlev Zwick, Nikhilesh Dholakia
Nikhilesh Dholakia
In this paper, we present a poststructuralist analysis of customer database technology. This approach allows us to regard customer databases as configurations of language that produce new and significant discursive effects. In particular, we focus on the role of databases and related technologies such as customer relationship management (CRM) in the discursive construction of both customers and customer relationships. First, we argue that organizations become the authors of customer identities, using the language of the database to configure customer representation. From this perspective, we can see the radical innovation that the customer database brings to the organizational construction of its …
Philosophy As Engineering, Lynn Stein
Philosophy As Engineering, Lynn Stein
Lynn Andrea Stein
Ours is a field in crisis. Artificial Intelligence cannot make up its collective mind whether it is a discipline of Science or of Engineering. It is unclear from our literature and from our research whether our goals are to explain intelligence or to create it. A researcher who hypothesizes about the structure of intelligent behavior is accused of constructing theories without hope of instantiation; one who creates a seemingly intelligent artifact often sees it derided as "mere hackery." The theorists among us confer in an ever more arcane language, grasping for the idealized agents and environments for which our formal …
Letter To The Editor: Adderall Abuse Sets Add Patients Back, Andrew Blitman
Letter To The Editor: Adderall Abuse Sets Add Patients Back, Andrew Blitman
Andrew Blitman
No abstract provided.
Who Happens Here? Ethical Responsibility, Subjectivity, And Corporeality: Self-Accounts In The Archive Of The Coalition Provisional Authority (Cpa) Of Iraq, Matilda Arvidsson
Who Happens Here? Ethical Responsibility, Subjectivity, And Corporeality: Self-Accounts In The Archive Of The Coalition Provisional Authority (Cpa) Of Iraq, Matilda Arvidsson
Dr Matilda Arvidsson
No abstract provided.
Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation, Stuart Glennan
Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation, Stuart Glennan
Stuart Glennan
Philosophers of science typically associate the causal-mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon's account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of mechanism, I show how the complex-systems approach avoids certain objections to Salmon's account of causal-mechanical explanation. I conclude by discussing how mechanistic explanations can provide understanding by unification.
Mechanisms, Causes, And The Layered Model Of The World, Stuart Glennan
Mechanisms, Causes, And The Layered Model Of The World, Stuart Glennan
Stuart Glennan
Most philosophical accounts of causation take causal relations to obtain between individuals and events in virtue of nomological relations between properties of these individuals and events. Such views fail to take into account the consequences of the fact that in general the properties of individuals and events will depend upon mechanisms that realize those properties. In this paper I attempt to rectify this failure, and in so doing to provide an account of the causal relevance of higher-level properties. I do this by critiquing one prominent model of higher-level properties – Kim’s functional model of reduction – and contrasting it …
Ephemeral Mechanisms And Historical Explanation, Stuart Glennan
Ephemeral Mechanisms And Historical Explanation, Stuart Glennan
Stuart Glennan
While much of the recent literature on mechanisms has emphasized the superiority of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation over laws and nomological explanation, paradigmatic mechanisms—e.g., clocks or synapses – actually exhibit a great deal of stability in their behavior. And while mechanisms of this kind are certainly of great importance, there are many events that do not occur as a consequence of the operation of stable mechanisms. Events of natural and human history are often the consequence of causal processes that are ephemeral and capricious. In this paper I shall argue that, notwithstanding their ephemeral nature, these processes deserve to be …
Mechanisms And The Nature Of Causation, Stuart Glennan
Mechanisms And The Nature Of Causation, Stuart Glennan
Stuart Glennan
In this paper I offer an analysis of causation based upon a theory of mechanisms – complex systems whose "internal" parts interact to produce a system's "external" behavior. I argue that all but the fundamental laws of physics can be explained by reference to mechanisms. Mechanisms provide an epistemologically unproblematic way to explain the necessity which is often taken to distinguish laws from other generalizations. This account of necessity leads to a theory of causation according to which events are causally related when there is a mechanism that connects them. I present reasons why the lack of an account of …
Love, Sex Shouldn't Be Free, Andrew Blitman
Decolonisation As Peacemaking: Applying Just War Theory To The Canadian Context, Sam Grey
Decolonisation As Peacemaking: Applying Just War Theory To The Canadian Context, Sam Grey
Sam Grey
For decades now, Canada has been seen as a global exemplar of peacemaking and peacekeeping, yet the troubled relationship between its state and the Indigenous peoples within its borders does little to support this image. There is, in fact, a strong case to be made that the ongoing crisis of Indigenous–settler state relations in Canada is best understood as a protracted war; or more succinctly, as a failure to achieve peace following the initial violence of conquest and colonisation. Accordingly, it makes sense to apply just war theory — a doctrine of military ethics — to the issue. Grounded in …
Why There Can't Be A Logic Of Induction, Stuart Glennan
Why There Can't Be A Logic Of Induction, Stuart Glennan
Stuart Glennan
Carap's attempt to develop an inductive logic has been criticized on a variety of grounds, and while there may be some philosophers who believe that difficulties with Carnap's approach can be overcome by further elaborations and modifications of his system, I think it is fair to say that the consensus is that the approach as a whole cannot succeed. In writing a paper on problems with inductive logic (and with Carnap's approach in particular), I might therefore be accused of beating a dead horse. However, there are still some (e.g., Spirtes, Glymour and Scheines 1993) who seem to believe that …
Modeling Mechanisms, Stuart Glennan
Modeling Mechanisms, Stuart Glennan
Stuart Glennan
Philosophers of science increasingly believe that much of science is concerned with understanding the mechanisms responsible for the production of natural phenomena. An adequate understanding of scientific research requires an account of how scientists develop and test models of mechanisms. This paper offers a general account of the nature of mechanical models, discussing the representational relationship that holds between mechanisms and their models as well as the techniques that can be used to test and refine such models. The analysis is supported by study of two competing models of a mechanism of speech perception.
A Phenomenology Of The Integration Of Faith And Learning, Elizabeth C. Sites, Fernando L. Garzon, Frederick Milacci, Barbara Boothe
A Phenomenology Of The Integration Of Faith And Learning, Elizabeth C. Sites, Fernando L. Garzon, Frederick Milacci, Barbara Boothe
Fred Milacci
This phenomenological investigation examined how eight student-nominated faculty who teach at an evangelical Christian liberal arts university describe their understanding and practice of the Integration of Faith and Learning (IFL). Collected data via informal, conversational, taped interviews led to the emergence of two primary themes: the Inseparability of Faith from Practice and the Outworking of Faith in Practice. The findings of the study highlight the need to create a more conducive context in which students can learn IFL and call for a re-examination of the already murky discourse surrounding definitional aspects of IFL. The study proposes to move the discourse …
Scripture As Word Of God: Evangelical Assumption Or Evangelical Question?, John D. Morrison
Scripture As Word Of God: Evangelical Assumption Or Evangelical Question?, John D. Morrison
John D. Morrison
Examines the views of D. Bloesch, G. Fackre, and C. Pinnock. Indicates their disjunctive positions introduce ontological and epistemological dualism into the doctrine of revelation. Takes Packer's view of the Bible as the Word of God written, affirming that the human languages used to reflect God's person and work are competent to do so. Finds Wolterstorff's answer to Barth and John Baillie insightful, but we must move past his views to the full-orbed acceptance of the Word of God as written to avoid negating propositional revelation.
In The Form Of A Longhouse: Haudenosaunee Political Philosophy And Social Contract Theory, Sam Grey
In The Form Of A Longhouse: Haudenosaunee Political Philosophy And Social Contract Theory, Sam Grey
Sam Grey
This essay presents the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (sometimes referred to as the Iroquois League or Five Nations) as part of an alternative social contract theory, contrasting the social and political institutions and norms of the Five Nations with those proposed by Enlightenment-era philosophers. Although the oral history of the Haudenosaunee describes a Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ prior to the founding of the Confederacy, the Five Nations entered into, and constantly renewed, a substantially different ‘social contract’ than that theorized by Hobbes, Rousseau, or Locke. Because these differences reveal a unique understanding of human nature and potential, undergirded by distinctly Haudenosaunee political …
Afflicting The Comfortable: An Assessment Of The Stasis In International Bioethical Discourse, Sam Grey
Afflicting The Comfortable: An Assessment Of The Stasis In International Bioethical Discourse, Sam Grey
Sam Grey
Despite decades of clinical research being carried out in the 'developing' world, neither the socio-political and economic context of the global South, nor the nature and historical trajectory of global inequality have played a substantive role in determining the nature and extent of North-to-South bioethical obligations. Instead, context has been used to vacate obligation, shut out theories of justice, and collapse the “four principles' of bioethics” – sacrosanct in the 'developed’ world - into a singular, non-negotiable focus on autonomy as a procedurally-defined right. Proponents of a minimum-standards system of international clinical research conflate scientific, statistical, economic, and ethical issues, …
In Harm's Way: Justification, Excuse, And Civilian Safety In Just War Theory, Sam Grey
In Harm's Way: Justification, Excuse, And Civilian Safety In Just War Theory, Sam Grey
Sam Grey
Just War Theory asserts that armed conflict can be fought in a way that safeguards moral and legal norms while responding to pragmatic/military imperatives. One of the ways in which it seeks to safeguard justice is through specific provisions for the immunity of, and due care for, the vulnerable and innocent. Unfortunately, two doctrines within Just War Theory – the Doctrine of Double Effect and the Doctrine of Supreme Emergency – suspend or vacate these provisions. The net effect is to render justifications inaccessible, leaving only excuses, the use of which establishes that no one is truly accountable, no meaningful …
Moving Towards Faith: A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Spirituality In Adult Education , Frederick Milacci
Moving Towards Faith: A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Spirituality In Adult Education , Frederick Milacci
Fred Milacci
This study examined how eight adult education practitioners understand spirituality. The investigation defined and grounded the notion of spirituality within a specific religious/theological tradition, Christianity broadly defined. Data were collected via informal, conversational, taped interviews, and several themes emerged. The study used these results to interrogate the discourse of spirituality and found several serious problems including: the nondefinition and misuse by the discourse of the term spirituality, the hazards of individualized spirituality caused by imprecise definitions of the term, a failure to address the issues of faith substantively, and the separation in the discourse of religion from spirituality. The study …
Religious Imagery And The American Association For Adult Education: The Gospel Of The Aaae, Frederick Milacci
Religious Imagery And The American Association For Adult Education: The Gospel Of The Aaae, Frederick Milacci
Fred Milacci
Using the findings from an analysis of articles appearing in the Journal of Adult Education, this paper shows how early adult educators used religious imagery to express their fervor and enthusiasm for the field of adult education. This religious-like sense of mission and purpose among early leaders in the field was grounded in the belief that adult education could bring hope and help to a troubled world and provides a refreshing alternative to the present-day push towards professionalization.
Marketing God: A Critical Inquiry Into Spirituality In The Workplace, Frederick Milacci, Sharon Howell
Marketing God: A Critical Inquiry Into Spirituality In The Workplace, Frederick Milacci, Sharon Howell
Fred Milacci
This paper examines the way spirituality is co-opted and commodified to serve the interests of marketplace from a faith-based perspective.