This collection of essays examines the ways in which disputes and controversies about the application of scientific knowledge are resolved. Four concrete examples of public controversy are considered in detail: the efficacy of Laetrile, the classification of homosexuality as a disease, the setting of safety standards in the workplace, and the utility of nuclear energy as a source of power. The essays in this volume show that debates about these cases are not confined to matters of empirical fact. Rather, as (...) is seen with most scientific and technical controversies, they focus on and are structured by complex ethical, economic, and political interests. Drs. Engelhardt and Caplan have brought together a distinguished group of scholars from the sciences and humanities, who sketch a theory of scientific controversy and attempt to provide recommendations about the ways in which both scientists and the public ought to seek more informed resolutions of highly contentious issues in science and technology. Scientific Controversies is offered as a contribution to the better understanding of the roles of both science and nonscientific interests in disputes and controversies pertaining to science and technology. (shrink)

Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr., Deadly Force: The True Story of How a Badge Can Become a License to Kill. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1983, 384 pp. Robert E. Goodin, Political Theory and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, ix + 286 pp.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative Symposium:Conflicting Interests in MedicineLaura Jean Bierut, Sal Cruz-Flores, Laura E. Hodges, Anthony A. Mikulec, Govind K. Nagaldinne, Erine L. Bakanas, John F. Peppin, Joel S. Perlmutter, William H. Seitz Jr., Edward Diao, Andre N. Sofair, and David M. Zientek• To Recruit or Not to Recruit for a Clinical Trial• An Unexpected Lesson• Am I on call for the entire Midwest?• Why is Medicare Wasting Away?• The Downside (...) of the Informed Consent Juggernaut• Expert Testimony at the Food and Drug Administration: Who Wants the Truth?• Crossroads: The Intersection of Personal, Professional Society, and Industry Relationships• A Change of Heart• The Evolution of Conflicts of Interest in a New Subspecialty: A Case Study of the Development of Interventional CardiologyCopyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This article describes the racial integration of Emory University and the subsequent creation of Pre-Start, an affirmative action program at Emory Law School from 1966 to 1972. It focuses on the initiative of the Dean of Emory Law School at the time, Ben F. Johnson, Jr.. Johnson played a number of leadership roles throughout his life, including successfully arguing a case before the United States Supreme Court while he was an Assistant Attorney General of Georgia, promoting legislation to create Atlanta (...) 's subway system as a state senator, and representing Emory in its lawsuit to strike down the state statute that would have rescinded its tax exemption if it admitted African American students ). This account supplements my related article on Pre-Start, "'A Bulwark against Anarchy': Affirmative Action, Emory Law School, and Southern Self-Help", providing more information about historical context generally, and particularly about Emory v. Nash. Johnson was ambitious for Emory as a whole, and particularly for the Law School, and he saw in segregation the single largest impediment to making Emory a nationally prominent research university. The story of Emory's integration, and Johnson's leadership, requires revision of the prevailing story of integration generally, and especially of universities. Integration at Emory came about because of the pressure that African Americans and their supporters created through the civil rights movement, but Emory administrators responded to such pressure more constructively than most. Their actions provide an interesting case study in effective leadership during a period of significant moral and political conflict. (shrink)

Highly praised for its clarity and rich exposition, this history of philosophy text illustrates philosophy as a process and not just a collection of opinions or conclusions. Rather than simply reporting the positions of a given philosopher, Lawhead's prose assists students in retracing the thinker's intellectual journey. Students are invited to engage with each philosopher's intellectual process, drawing connections with their own lives and cultures. Metaphors, analogies, vivid images, concrete examples, common experiences, and diagrams demonstrate the concrete relevance of abstract (...) arguments and their practical implications for contemporary society. This fourth edition of VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY: A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY features new historical profiles and/or works representing such philosophers as Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, Simone de Beauvoir, and Martha Nussbaum, among others. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

Various laws and theories in the natural and social sciences are presented with a view to discerning the syntactic and semantic characteristics of many idealizations in science. Three different kinds of idealizations are discussed: ideal conditions, ideal cases, and idealized theories. An ideal condition is a formula in which state variables occur, whose existential closure is false, and for which there is another formula that can be constructed out of the original formula such that the existential closure of the new (...) formula is true. An ideal case is a statement which is logically equivalent to a universal conditional which has an ideal condition as its antecedent. And an idealized theory is a set of false universal conditional statements. Alternative syntactic and semantic analyses are viewed and criticized. (shrink)

We use evidence from cognitive psychology and the history of science to examine the issue of the theory-ladenness of perceptual observation. This evidence shows that perception is theory-laden, but that it is only strongly theory-laden when the perceptual evidence is ambiguous or degraded, or when it requires a difficult perceptual judgment. We argue that debates about the theory-ladenness issue have focused too narrowly on the issue of perceptual experience, and that a full account of the scientific process requires an examination (...) of theory-ladenness in attention, perception, data interpretation, data production, memory, and scientific communication. We conclude that the evidence for theory-ladenness does not lead to a relativist account of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

The goal of this chapter is to describe recollective memory and give an account of some of the characteristics of this form of human memory. I take recollective memory to be the type of memory that occurs when an individual recalls a specific episode from their past experience. I start with this very loose definition because a large part of this chapter consists of an attempt to work out a more detailed and analytic description of this form of memory.

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes the interesting, but obscure claim that the normative constraints that constitute the objectivity of our representations have their source ultimately in transcendental apperception. Keller focuses on this claim. He interprets Kant’s condition of transcendental apperception as the claim that I must represent myself in an impersonal way, and he argues that impersonal self-consciousness is a necessary condition under which I can distinguish my particular take on things from the way things are independently (...) of my own perspective on them. He elaborates his interpretation and defense of the condition of transcendental self-consciousness by discussing its role in each of the central arguments in the Critique in which the notion importantly figures: the transcendental deduction in both the first edition and in the second, the Analogies of Experience, the Paralogisms, and the second-edition refutation of idealism. (shrink)

Hegel's objection -- Is Kant's idealism subjective? -- An ambiguity in 'subjectivism' -- The epistemological problem -- The transcendental deduction of the categories and subjectivism -- Are Kant's categories subjective? -- Hegel's suspicion : Kantian critique and subjectivism -- What is kantian philosophical criticism? -- Hegel's suspicion : initial formulation -- A shallow suspicion? -- Deepening the suspicion : criticism, autonomy, and subjectivism -- Directions of response -- Critique and suspicion : unmasking the critical philosophy -- Hegel's transformation of critique (...) -- The rejection of Kantian critique : philosophy, skepticism, and the recovery of the ancient idea -- Hegel's epistemology in the shadow of Schelling -- Schulze's skepticism contra the critical philosophy -- Ancient versus modern skepticism : Hegel's difference -- Against the modern conception of rational cognition -- Against modern self-certainty -- The history of skepticism: decline into dogmatism -- Philosophy counter culture and time -- The return to Kantian critique : recognizing the rights of ordinary consciousness -- Two conceptions of philosophical critique -- The return to critique and the relation of philosophy to its history -- The rights of ordinary consciousness and the need for critique -- Critique as the realization of the science of metaphysics -- Hegel's self-transformational criticism -- Presuppositionless philosophy -- The problem of the criterion -- Self-transformational criticism -- The problem of the we' -- Our transformation -- Hegel's alternative model : critical transformation as self-realization. (shrink)

A brief discussion is offered of what it means to say that a set of statements provides D-N explanation with special emphasis given to approximative D-N explanation. An idealized theory is seen to provide approximative D-N explanation. An ideal case provides explanation only if postulates are offered which connect the ideal antecedent condition with actual conditions. Such postulates will help in accounting for deviations between what the consequent of the ideal case entails and what actually occurs. Three ways are presented (...) for deciding on the acceptability of idealizations: (i) as actual conditions more closely approximate the ideal antecedent conditions specified in an ideal case, the more closely actual cases ought to approximate the consequent of the ideal case; (ii) the additional postulates connecting ideal antecedent conditions with actual conditions ought to account for deviations between what is entailed by an idealized theory and what actually occurs; and (iii) an idealized theory is explained by a more general theory when certain state variables in the more general theory are given extreme values. It is argued that (iii) is not a necessary condition for the acceptability of idealizations. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a psychological account of the nature and development of explanation. We propose that an explanation is an account that provides a conceptual framework for a phenomenon that leads to a feeling of understanding in the reader/hearer. The explanatory conceptual framework goes beyond the original phenomenon, integrates diverse aspects of the world, and shows how the original phenomenon follows from the framework. We propose that explanations in everyday life are judged on the criteria of empirical accuracy, (...) scope, consistency, simplicity, and plausibility. We conclude that explanations in science are evaluated by the same criteria, plus those of precision, formalisms, and fruitfulness. We discuss several types of explanation that are used in everyday life – causal/mechanical, functional, and intentional. We present evidence to show that young children produce explanations that have the same essential form as those used by adults. We also provide evidence that children use the same evaluation criteria as adults, but may not apply those additional criteria for the evaluation of explanations that are used by scientists. (shrink)

Phenomenal reports were obtained immediately after participants retrieved information from long-term memory. Data were gathered for six basic forms of memory and for three forms of memory that asked for declarative information about procedural tasks . The data show consistent reports of mental imagery during retrieval of information from the generic perceptual, recollective, motor—declarative, rote—declarative, and cognitive—declarative categories; much less imagery was reported for the semantic, motor, rote, and cognitive categories. Overall, the data provide support for the theoretical framework outlined (...) in Brewer and Pani. (shrink)