In his recent book, The Moral Problem , Michael Smith presents a number of arguments designed to expose the difficulties with so-called 'extcrnalist' theories of motivation. This essay endeavors to defend externalism from Smith's attacks. I attempt three tasks in the essay. First, I try to clarify and reformulate Smith's distinction between internalism and externalism. Second, I formulate two of Smith's arguments- what I call the 'reliability argument' and 'the rationalist argument' -and attempt to show that these arguments fail to (...) damage externalism. Third, I undertake to expose and question some of the motivations that drive internalism. (shrink)
American polygenism was a provocative scientific movement whose controversial claim that humankind did not share a common ancestor caused a firestorm among naturalists and the lay public beginning in the 1830s. This article gives specific attention to the largely overlooked religious ideas marshaled by American polygenists in their effort to construct race as a unit of analysis. I focus specifically on the thought of the American polygenist and renowned surgeon Dr Josiah Clark Nott (1804–73) of Mobile, Alabama. Scholars have claimed (...) that in his effort to establish a properly modern scientific view of race Nott was one of the first American naturalists to publicly denounce the notion of common human descent (monogenesis) as proclaimed in the Bible. I argue that despite his rejection of monogenesis, Nott’s racial theory remained squarely within the tradition of Christian ideas about the natural world. American polygenism provides an example of how scientific and religious ideas worked together in the minds of American antebellum thinkers in the development of novel theories about race and human origins. (shrink)
In his recent book, The Moral Problem, Michael Smith presents a number of arguments designed to expose the difficulties with so-called `externalist' theories of motivation. This essay endeavors to defend externalism from Smith's attacks. I attempt three tasks in the essay. First, I try to clarify and reformulate Smith's distinction between internalism and externalism. Second, I formulate two of Smith's arguments-what I call the `reliability argument' and `the rationalist argument'-and attempt to show that these arguments fail to damage externalism. Third, (...) I undertake to expose and question some of the motivations that drive internalism. (shrink)
In his recent book, The Moral Problem, Michael Smith presents a number of arguments designed to expose the difficulties with so-called 'extcrnalist' theories of motivation. This essay endeavors to defend externalism from Smith's attacks. I attempt three tasks in the essay. First, I try to clarify and reformulate Smith's distinction between internalism and externalism. Second, I formulate two of Smith's arguments- what I call the 'reliability argument' and 'the rationalist argument' -and attempt to show that these arguments fail to damage (...) externalism. Third, I undertake to expose and question some of the motivations that drive internalism. (shrink)
Human cooperation is held to be an evolutionary puzzle because people voluntarily engage in costly cooperation, and costly punishment of non-cooperators, even among anonymous strangers they will never meet again. The costs of such cooperation cannot be recovered through kin-selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, or costly signaling. A number of recent authors label this behavior "strong reciprocity", and argue that it is: a newly documented aspect of human nature, adaptive, and evolved by group selection. We argue exactly the opposite; that (...) the phenomenon is: not new, maladaptive, and evolved by individual selection. In our perspective, the apparent puzzle disappears to reveal a biological and evolutionary logic to human cooperation. Group selection may play a role in theory, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain human cooperation. Our alternative solution is simpler, makes fewer assumptions, and is more parsimonious with the empirical data. (shrink)
This popular text continues using the format of the three approaches—The Executive, The Facilitator, and The Liberationist. For the Fifth Edition, the authors add four new case studies: “Scripted Teaching,” “Accountability and Merit,” “What Is the Value of Caring Relationships?” and “School Funding.” Using these and other realistic case studies, they explore the strengths and weaknesses of each approach so that teachers can critically assess their own philosophical positions on teaching. Teachers are urged to ask themselves such questions as: What (...) is the main goal of teaching? What is the most important purpose of education? What do I expect my students to eventually become? Is the way I structure my teaching influenced by how I view my role and goals? This updated edition also adds a new section called “Topics and Resources” to encourage further inquiry into teaching. Approaches to Teaching is one of the five books in the highly regarded Teachers College Press THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION SERIES, now in its Fifth Edition. All of the books in this series are designed to help pre- and in-service teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice. (shrink)
Terence Wilmot Hutchison, a Fellow of the British Academy, was a historian of economics, methodologist, and acerbic critic of hubris and pretension amongst economists. He was born at Bournemouth and grew up in London. Hutchison's father was the flamboyant and much married Robert Langton Douglas, while his mother was Grace Hutchison. It was as a classicist that he went to the University of Cambridge in 1931. But Hutchison quickly lost interest in a subject that seemed to him to have (...) little relevance to the economic turmoil of the world, and switched to economics, graduating in 1934 with a First. He left Cambridge in 1934 and registered as an occasional student at the London School of Economics. This chapter presents a biography of Hutchison and also narrates his trips to Germany, Iraq, and India, as well as his stints at the University of Hull, LSE, and the University of Birmingham. (shrink)
A Previous article in this journal gave some account of Terence quotations in Priscian. A similar account for Servius is necessary. Umpf en bach's summary is far from accurate; and it has the serious defect that no distinction is made between Servius proper and the material peculiar to the enlarged Commentary. With Thilo's warning that the evidence is all against the assumption that the enlarged Commentary is a truer representation of what Servius himself wrote, we should, in any problem (...) relating to Servius, confine ourselves strictly to what we know to be his work. (shrink)
In dealing with excerpts from Terence in the Servian Commentary on Virgil I deferred consideration of the material found only in the enlarged Commentary, on the ground that, if any difference of quality or character should appear in this material, it must be kept distinct from the work of Servius.