The Supreme Court of Idaho held, in Idaho Association of Chiropractic Physicians, Inc. v. Alcorn, No. 23787,1999 WL 134677, at *1, that insurance regulations of health care services must apply equally to all providers. The Idaho legislature enacted the Small Employer Health Insurance Availability Act, Idaho Code § 41-4701, and the Individual Health Insurance Availability Act, id. § 41-5201, which is to be implemented by the Idaho Small Employer and Individual Health Reinsurance Program. The goal of the legislation is to (...) make health insurance available and affordable to small employers and their employees, and to individuals who would not otherwise have health insurance. Accordingly, the Program promulgated the following rule: “Chiropractic services will be subject to one thousand dollars per year limit.” Idaho Ass’n of Chiropractic Physicians, 1999 WL 134677, at *1.The plaintiff, the Idaho Association of Chiropractic Physicians, sought declaratory judgment and injunctive relief against defendant, James M. Alcorn, director of the Idaho State Department of Insurance, on equal protection and due process grounds. (shrink)

That the pattern into which Lentricchia seeks to assimilate Stevens is politically charged becomes clearest when we turn to the following oddly incomprehensible statement: “In the literary culture that Stevens would create, the ‘phallic’ would not have been the curse word of some recent feminist criticism but the name of a limited, because male, respect for literature” . At the point where he makes this assertion, Lentricchia has been persuasively demonstrating that Stevens was “encouraged … to fantasize the potential social (...) authority of the literary as phallic authority” . But suddenly the critic’s measured discourse is disrupted by obviously personal feelings about the “curse word of some recent feminist criticism” and by a dazzlingly illogical definition of “respect for literature.” Such a disruption suggests that, in making his apparently objective argument about Stevens, Lentricchia has some other not so hidden agenda—and, of course, his peculiar decision to link his discussion of Stevens with an attack on The Madwoman in the Attic further supports this conclusion. What most strikingly reinforces the point, however, is the hysterical—or perhaps, with some recent feminist linguists, we should say “testerical”—rhetoric in which he couches his assault on our work.14 14. The term “testeria,” for male “hysteria,” is proposed by Juli Loesch in “Testeria and Penisolence—A Scourge to Humankind,” Aphra: The Feminist Literary Magazine, 4, 1 : 43-45; quoted in Casey Miller and Kate Swift, Words and Women: New Language in New Times , pp. 60-61. Sandra M. Gilbert, professor of English at Princeton University, and Susan Gubar, professor of English at Indiana University, are coauthors of No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, Volume I: The War of the Words , the first installment of a three-part sequel to their Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination . They have also coedited The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

Thoughts and other mental states are defined by their role in a functional system. Since it is easier to determine when we have knowledge than when reasoning has occurred, Gilbert Harman attempts to answer the latter question by seeing what assumptions about reasoning would best account for when we have knowledge and when not. He describes induction as inference to the best explanation, or more precisely as a modification of beliefs that seeks to minimize change and maximize explanatory coherence. (...) Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

I have been supposing that for the theory of reasoning, explicit belief is an all-or-nothing matter, I have assumed that, as far as principles of reasoning are concerned, one either believes something explicitly or one does not; in other words an appropriate "representation" is either in one's "memory" or not. The principles of reasoning are principles for modifying such all-or-nothing representations. This is not to deny that in some ways belief is a matter of degree. For one thing implicit belief (...) is certainly a matter of degree, since it is a matter of how easily and automatically one can infer something from what one believes explicitly. Furthermore, explicit belief is a matter of degree in the sense that one believes some things more strongly than others. Sometimes one is only somewhat inclined to believe something, sometimes one is not sure what to believe, sometimes one is inclined to disbelieve something, sometimes one is quite confident something is not so, and so forth. (shrink)

According to moral relativism, there is not a single true morality. There are a variety of possible moralities or moral frames of reference, and whether something is morally right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust, etc. is a relative matter—relative to one or another morality or moral frame of reference. Something can be morally right relative to one moral frame of reference and morally wrong relative to another. It is useful to compare moral relativism to other relativisms. One (...) possible comparison is with motion relativism. There is no such thing as absolute motion or absolute rest. Whether something is moving or at rest is relative to a spatio-temporal frame of reference. Something may be at rest in one frame of reference and moving in another. There is no such thing as absolute motion and absolute rest, but we can make do with relative motion and rest. Similarly, moral relativism is the view that, although there is no such thing as absolute right and wrong, we can make do with relative right and wrong. (shrink)

CRS says that the meanings of expressions of a language or other symbol system or the contents of mental states are determined and explained by the way symbols are used in thinking. According to CRS one.

John Rawls tells at the start of A Theory of Justice that his theory is intentionally constrained in two ways: it is ideal and focuses on the justice of the basic structure of society. This chapter begins by evaluating Rawls's claim that ideal theory sets the target of reform for nonideal theory, whose task it is to work out what to do “under less happy conditions.” It states that it is unclear just when ideal theory can inform the priorities of (...) nonideal theory. The chapter also presents discussions on whether the ideal theory is utopian and concessive to human nature. Even the kind of nonideal theory that delivers concrete action‐guidance for “us” remains unhelpfully ideal if it does so merely in the form of policies or institutional arrangements. (shrink)

QUINE'S PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS are for the most part contained in two collections of essays, From a Logical Point of View and recently The Ways of Paradox, and in an important book, Word and Object. The present survey will be restricted to views expressed in these three volumes, although Quine's work in logic is continuous with his work in philosophy. The present Part One describes and defends Quine's views about meaning. The following Part Two does the same for his views on (...) other subjects, especially ontology and epistemology. The two parts are related in a way to be explained in Part Two. (shrink)

John Hawthorne’s marvelous book contains a wealth of arguments and insights based on an impressive knowledge and understanding of contemporary discussion. We can address only a small aspect of the topic. In particular, we will offer our own answers to two questions about knowledge that he discusses.

Consider the idea that a natural language like English is in the first instance incorporated into the system of representation one thinks with. This ‘incorporation’ view is compared with a translation or ‘decoding’ view of communication. Compositional semantics makes sense only given the implausible decoding view.

Essays analyze the nature of the human mind, thought, and imagination and explore the connection of thought to teaching.

There is a growing realisation that the current upward trend in levels of disclosure of social, ethical and environmental performance by corporations and other organisations is not being accompanied by simultaneous greater levels of public trust. Low levels of confidence in the information communicated in public reporting is probably undermining the impetus for this disclosure. This article suggests that this credibility gap can be narrowed through the use of third party independent assurance. However, this is not an unqualified panacea. Much (...) verification and assurance practice itself has to date been of questionable robustness, reliability and consistency, and has been framed by financial assurance models that are inadequate for the broader, qualitative dimensions of social, ethical and environmental performance. The paper argues that there is need for a universal standard for the provision of assurance of social, ethical and environmental reporting, and indeed for the credibility of the assurance providers themselves. The new AA1000S Assurance Standard, developed by the Institute of Social and Ethical AccountAbility, offers an approach and a tool for addressing these gaps. (shrink)

What is moral reasoning? For that matter, what is any sort of reasoning? Let me begin by making a few distinctions. First, there is a distinction between reasoning as something that that people do and the abstract structures of proof or “argument” that are the subject matter of formal logic. I will be mainly concerned with reasoning in the first sense, reasoning that people do. Second, there is a distinction between moral reasoning with other people and moral reasoning by and (...) for yourself . Moral reasoning with others may involve discussion with them, bargaining with them, and possibly arguing with them. (shrink)

The notion of a community of inquiry has been treated by many of its proponents as being an exemplar of democracy in action. We argue that the assumptions underlying this view present some practical and theoretical difficulties, particularly in relation to distribution of power among the members of a community of inquiry. We identify two presuppositions in relation to distribution of power that require attention in developing an educational model that is committed to deliberative democracy: (1) openness to inquiry and (...) readiness to reason, and (2) mutual respect of students and teachers towards one another. Our contention is that these presuppositions, presented as preconditions necessary to the creation of a community of inquiry, are not without ideological commitments and dependent upon the ability of participants to share power. Using group dynamic theories and the ideas of Hannah Arendt, we argue that behaviours commonly interpreted as obstacles to dialogue or reflective inquiry could provide opportunities for growth. (shrink)

(1) modal logic is not needed, Since there are alternative accounts of modality. (2) modal logic does not function as logic even in the thinking of its advocates, As is revealed, E.G., When the semantics of modal logic is presented in an extensional metalanguage. Furthermore, (3) when a wider view is taken, One sees that modal logic treats as logical constants expressions that belong to a large and open syntactic class, Unlike other logical constants. Finally, (4) modal logic treats as (...) sentential operators devices that function in natural language as underlying predicates. The last two points also indicate that a theory of modality making use of modal predicates is to be preferred to an account that explains away modality in terms of quantification over possible worlds. (shrink)

One of us [Gilbert, M.. “Collective Belief and Scientific Change.” Sociality and Responsibility. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 37-49.] has proposed that ascriptions of beliefs to scientific communities generally involve a common notion of collective belief described by her in numerous places. A given collective belief involves a joint commitment of the parties, who thereby constitute what Gilbert refers to as a plural subject. Assuming that this interpretive hypothesis is correct, and that some of the belief ascriptions in (...) question are true, then the members of some scientific communities have obligations that may act as barriers both to the generation and, hence, the fair evaluation of new ideas and to changes in their community’s beliefs. We argue that this may help to explain Thomas Kuhn’s observations on “normal science”, and go on to develop the relationship between Gilbert's proposal and several features of a group of physicists working on a fundamental physical theory called “string theory”, as described by physicist Lee Smolin [Smolin, L.. The Trouble with Physics. Mariner Books: New York.]. We argue that the features of the string theory community that Smolin cites are well explained by the hypothesis that the community is a plural subject of belief. (shrink)

This paper inquires the systematical consequences in the Nietzschean critics of the biological determination of life. We proposed an analysis about central topics of this determination: the finalism, the life and chaos. This approach allows us to relieve a systematical conception of what Nietzsche understands by “necessity”. This conception of necessity is not metaphysic in the traditional sense, but implies a subversion of all special metaphysic. Beyond this, it entails a critical to the transcendental and normative version, own of Kantian (...) thought, about the question of life. These confrontations seek to clarify the gnoseological and ontological areas put in check, on the status of the concept of life. (shrink)

The ‘community of inquiry’ as formulated by C. S. Peirce is grounded in the notion of communities of discipline-based inquiry engaged in the construction of knowledge. The phrase ‘transforming the classroom into a community of inquiry’ is commonly understood as a pedagogical activity with a philosophical focus to guide classroom discussion. But it has a broader application. Integral to the method of the community of inquiry is the ability of the classroom teacher to actively engage in the theories and practices (...) of discipline-based communities of inquiry so as to become informed by the norms of the disciplines, not only to aspire to competence within the disciplines, but also to develop habits of self-correction for reconstructing those same norms when faced with novel problems and solutions, including those in the classroom. This has implications for science education and the role of educational philosophy in developing students' ability to think scientifically. But it also has broader implications for thinking critically within all key learning areas. Here we concentrate on science education. We present the parallels between philosophical inquiry and scientific inquiry that need to be realised to promote and engage with scientific inquiry in the classroom. We also discuss the conflicts between philosophical inquiry and the way inquiry science in the classroom is portrayed in the education literature. Based on philosophical and historical perceptions of science as inquiry, a practical approach to implementation of scientific inquiry in the science classroom is presented. (shrink)