Online research in philosophy

Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, published in 1919, is an episodic collection of character sketches based mostly around the perspective of George Willard, a small-town journalist who listens to the stories of various characters, often described in grotesque terms, whose passionate inner lives contrast with their limited outwardly lived existences. The initial critical response to these stories was to regard Anderson as a sort of cheap Freudian who was making an obvious criticism of American Puritanism and conformity. One reviewer, Regis Michaud, wrote that Winesburg, Ohio was "entirely in keeping with the most recent contributions of American literature to psychoanalysis";1 another reviewer, H. W. Boynton ..

Dreyfus and Spinosa's 'Coping with Things-in-themselves' assumes that the line between the familiar and the strange coincides with the line between the 'for us' and the 'in itself'. But their opponents would urge that the familiar-strange distinction be dealt with pragmatically rather than ontologically.

Newspaper stories that rely on reconstruction of events from police reports, court records, and recollections of witnesses often sacrifice attribution for the sake of immediacy. Such stories make compelling reading, but they mislead readers by erasing the line between information obtained via observation and information obtained from human or documentary sources. This article argues that the lack of attribution is more distracting than it presence--because readers wonder how the reporters know what they know--and calls on reporters to make clear when they have left the realm of observation and entered that of reconstruction.

A number of clarifications and some corrections are made of the target article. I clarify which concepts the thesis was intended to be about, what "descriptionism" means, the difference between "concepts" and "conceptions", why extensions are not determined by conceptions. I make clearer what "substances" are, how one knows what inductions to project over them, the connection with "basic level categories", how it is determined what substance a given substance concept is of, how equivocation in concepts occurs and the role of language in conception of substances. Finally, I make clearer exactly why I said that concepts of individuals, real kinds and stuffs "have a common structure", showing that, rightly understood, this view is not in conflict with data on infant concepts.

: In this paper, I argue that stories about difference do not promote critical self and social understanding; rather, on the contrary, it is the way we understand ourselves that makes some stories relevantly different. I discuss the uncritical reception of a story about homosexuality in Cuba, urging attention to generalizations explaining judgments of importance. I suggest that some stories from the South will never be relevant to discussions about human flourishing until we critically examine ideas about freedom and democracy, and their role in national identity, explaining the significance we give, or not, to such stories.

The epistemological consequences of paradox are paradoxical. They can be usefully generated by telling a series of once-upon-a-time stories that make various philosophical points, starting out innocent and ending up, well, paradoxical.

How is it possible to respond emotionally to that which we believe is not the case? All of the many responses to this "paradox of fiction" make one or more of three important mistakes: (1) neglecting the context of believing, (2) assuming that belief is an all-or-nothing affair, and (3) assuming that if you believe that p then you cannot also reasonably believe that not-p. My thesis is that we react emotionally to stories because we do believe what stories tell us – not fictionally-believe, not make-believe, but believe in the ordinary way in which we believe anything at all.

Stories of young children who make up exaggerated stories provide questions for a discussion about lying.

Using short stories as supplements to traditional economics courses or as the part of non-traditional economics or interdisciplinary courses helps students to grasp economic concepts while diversifying instructional methods in the classroom. Short stories centered on economic concepts fit well in the long tradition of teaching by parable. Students derive great pleasure from reading short stories and they possess great skill analyzing short stories, seeming quick to grasp even very subtle meaning in the narrative. The paper describes the pedagogical value of this literary form and presents numerous short stories apt for use in the economics classroom.