Journal articles: 'Argument for nature'

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McWhorter, John. "The Nature of Argument." Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 27, no. 2 (August 13, 2012): 377–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.27.2.07mcw.

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Fatoorchi, Pirooz. "Self-Knowledge and a Refutation of the Immateriality of Human Nature." International Philosophical Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2020): 189–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ipq202054149.

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The paper deals with an argument reported by Razi (d. 1210) that was used to attempt to refute the immateriality of human nature. This argument is based on an epistemic asymmetry between our self-knowledge and our knowledge of immaterial things. After some preliminary remarks, the paper analyzes the structure of the argument in four steps. From a methodological point of view, the argument is similar to a family of epistemological arguments (notably, the Cartesian argument from doubt) and is vulnerable to the same objection that can be raised against that form of reasoning. The last section points out that the argument can be used indirectly to highlight the weakness in some arguments for the claim that there is something immaterial in human beings.

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Andjelkovic, Miroslava. "The logico-epistemological nature of ontic and ontological arguments." Theoria, Beograd 54, no. 4 (2011): 17–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/theo1104017a.

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In the paper I explore van Inwagen?s distinction between ontic and ontological arguments, the latter being a special case of the former. An ontic argument proves the existence of some entity; an ontological one proves the existence of a deity. Both are based on a single premise which specifies a set of properties exemplified by an entity of the sort in question. This set van Inwagen calls an ontic set, and he defines the ontic set of an ontological argument in a way which secures the semantic validity of the argument. I argue that an ontological argument is neither immediate nor semantically valid, but that, contrary to van Inwagen?s contention, it is rational to accept its conclusion. In my argument for this claim I rely on C.I. Lewis? notions of intension and comprehension. Although I disagree with van Inwagen?s formulation of ontic arguments, I do not reject it as a whole - its considerable advantage is, I suggest, in blocking an objection (which allegedly follows from Fregean semantics) that the sentence ?God exists? is not well formed. Consequently, part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of existential propositions. The argument I give in favour of the rationality of believing in the conclusion of an ontological argument is based on identifying and avoiding the step which leads to a generalization resembling the one that generates Kyburg?s lottery paradox.

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Stutt, Arthur, and Stephen Shennan. "The nature of archaeological arguments." Antiquity 64, no. 245 (December 1990): 766–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0003598x00078868.

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We try (most of us) to be logical in our work. We listen to arguments (most of us) and try to be persuaded by that argument which is better – because it is more logical, because it is more reasonable, because it fits the facts better. But how reliably does one tell which is better – except by illogical intuition? Computer-aided study of the structure of arguments may help

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Morgan, Jamie. "The Nature of a Transcendental Argument." Journal of Critical Realism 3, no. 2 (June 2004): 305–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/jocr.v3i2.305.

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PARSONS, GLENN. "Nature Aesthetics and the Respect Argument." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76, no. 4 (September 2018): 411–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12593.

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LEWTAS, PATRICK. "Physicalism and the Intrinsic Nature of Consciousness." Dialogue 53, no. 2 (April 16, 2014): 203–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0012217314000237.

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This paper presents a metaphysical argument against physicalism based on the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. It argues that the physical, as physicalism must understand it, consists entirely of extrinsic properties, whereas consciousness involves at least some intrinsic properties. It concludes that consciousness has non-physical properties and that physicalism is false. The paper then defends its premises against current physicalist thinking. As much as possible, it offers metaphysical arguments about physical and conscious properties rather than epistemological arguments about our physical and phenomenal concepts.

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Rauschenbach, Michael. "Theistic Moral Realism, Evolutionary Debunking Arguments, and a Catholic Philosophy of Nature." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 93 (2019): 177–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/acpaproc2021430127.

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Evolutionary debunking arguments, whether defended by Street (2006), Joyce (2006), or others against moral realism, or by Plantinga (1993, 2011) and others against atheism, seek to determine the implications of the still-dominant worldview of naturalism. Examining these arguments is thus a critical component of any defense of a theistic philosophy of nature. Recently, several authors have explored the connection between evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism (hence: EDAs) and Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalistic atheism (hence: EAAN). Typically, responses in this vein have been critical of EDAs, arguing that they are in some way self-undermining. Different critics have argued that, in the course of defending the EAAN, the theist loses her best response to the probabilistic argument from evil for atheism. Here, I provide the first systematic comparison of all three arguments—EDAs, the EAAN, and the problem of evil—and suggest that the first charge succeeds while the second fails.

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Sorlin, Sverker, Alf Hornborg, and Gisli Palsson. "Negotiating Nature: Culture, Power, and Environmental Argument." Environmental History 8, no. 1 (January 2003): 132. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3985977.

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Alsina, Alex. "On the nonsemantic nature of argument structure." Language Sciences 23, no. 4-5 (July 2001): 355–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0388-0001(00)00030-9.

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Bauer, Keith A. "Transhumanism and Its Critics." International Journal of Technoethics 1, no. 3 (July 2010): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/jte.2010070101.

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Transhumanism is a social, technological, political, and philosophical movement that advocates the transformation of human nature by means of pharmacology, genetic manipulation, cybernetic modification, nanotechnology, and a host of other technologies. The aim of this movement is to increase physical and sensory abilities, augment intelligence and memory, and extend lifespan. After providing some background on transhumanism, its philosophical heritage, and its goals, the author looks at three arguments against transhumanism, arguing that they are unpersuasive and should be rejected. This paper presents two arguments against transhumanism that have merit. The first argument is an argument from justice that addresses the distribution of benefits and burdens for funding, developing, and employing enhancement technology. The second argument examines a significant assumption held by many transhumanists, namely, that there is an essential “human nature” that can be transcended.

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DAVATOS, Ian Anthony B. "GOD, SCIENCE, AND METHODOLOGICAL NATURALISM." International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science 4, no. 7 (November 7, 2020): 62–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.26520/ijtps.2020.4.7.62-79.

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In this paper, I call into question a commonly assumed principle in science known as methodological naturalism, which is the idea that science should only accept natural, as opposed to supernatural, explanations. In support of MN, two arguments are commonly thrown against the idea of theistic explanation in science: the science stopper argument and the God-of-the-gaps argument. The science stopper argument states that appealing to theistic explanations hinders science from making steady progress; it simply stops science from its tracks. In other words, abandoning MN spells the death of science. The God-of-the-gaps argument states that appealing to God when explaining phenomenon is a form of an argument from ignorance, what critics call God-of-the-gaps thinking, which is considered to be fallacious reasoning. Any gap in nature that is explained by God, so the argument goes, is simply an appeal to our ignorance that we have no yet found the correct explanation to such natural mystery. In this scenario, an appeal to God is assumed to simply show our lack of knowledge with regard to the workings of nature. After introducing these arguments, I assess their strength by looking at the history of methodological naturalism. I then show how the history of science does not only fail to support these arguments but actually refutes them.

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POSTON, TED, and TRENT DOUGHERTY. "Divine hiddenness and the nature of belief." Religious Studies 43, no. 2 (April 16, 2007): 183–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034412507008943.

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AbstractIn this paper we argue that attention to the intricacies relating to belief illustrate crucial difficulties with Schellenberg's hiddenness argument. This issue has been only tangentially discussed in the literature to date. Yet we judge this aspect of Schellenberg's argument deeply significant. We claim that focus on the nature of belief manifests a central flaw in the hiddenness argument. Additionally, attention to doxastic subtleties provides important lessons about the nature of faith.

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TAKAHASHI, Tomomi. "Barren Nature of the Argument Concerning the Barren Nature of Educational Psychology." Annual Report of Educational Psychology in Japan 41 (2002): 187–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.5926/arepj1962.41.0_187.

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15

Merlussi, Pedro. "Determinism, Laws of Nature and the Consequence Argument." Manuscrito 39, no. 1 (June 3, 2016): 73–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0100-6045.2016.v39n1.pm.

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Reiners, Christiane S., Markus Bliersbach, and Karl Marniok. "The Cultural Argument for Understanding Nature of Science." Science & Education 26, no. 5 (July 2017): 583–610. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11191-017-9912-4.

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Dosanjh, Ranpal. "Laws of Nature and Individuals." Philosophy 96, no. 1 (September 9, 2020): 49–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0031819120000297.

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AbstractIndividuals (like the Earth or a biological species) are often the subject of generalizations of various special sciences. The traditional argument is that there can't be laws about such individuals, since the law statements would have to contain local predicates (refer essentially to a particular time, place, object, or event). Marc Lange argues that, despite local predication, there can be laws about individuals. This paper argues, on the contrary, that there can be no such laws – not because of local predication, but because the laws would discriminate among material systems on non-qualitative grounds. I rely on the principle that qualitatively identical systems under one set of laws must evolve in the same manner. If there could be laws about individuals, nothing would guarantee that the principle is satisfied. My argument is illustrated by a thought experiment inspired by Strawson's massive reduplication argument.

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18

Lowe, E. J. "Miracles and Laws of Nature." Religious Studies 23, no. 2 (June 1987): 263–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s003441250001876x.

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Hume's famous discussion of miracles in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is curious both on account of the arguments he does deploy and on account of the arguments he does not deploy, but might have been expected to. The first and second parts of this paper will be devoted to examining, respectively, these two objects of curiosity. The second part I regard as the more important, because I shall there try to show that the fact that Hume does not deploy an argument that he might have been expected to deploy in fact reflects a weakness in the view of natural laws that has (rightly or wrongly) come to be associated with Hume's name. I shall argue, in fact, that it is a symptom of the defectiveness of the ‘Humean’ view of natural laws that on that view it is only too easy to rule out the possibility of a miracle ever occurring. In the third part of the paper, I shall show how another view of laws can overcome this problem.

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19

Raymont, Paul. "Tye's Criticism of the Knowledge Argument." Dialogue 34, no. 4 (1995): 713–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0012217300011070.

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Traditionally, one of the primary obstacles for physicalist accounts of the mind has been the apparent contrast between the intrinsic nature of our experiences and the intrinsic nature of the brain states with which they are allegedly identical. For instance, the intrinsic nature of an itch seems quite different from that of any electro-chemical state or event in the brain.

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20

Granger, Herbert. "Aristotle on the Analogy Between Action and Nature." Classical Quarterly 43, no. 1 (May 1993): 168–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009838800044244.

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In Physics 2.8 Aristotle argues for his natural teleology by arguing for the goal-directed character of nature (or biology). The argument that he develops with the most care is directed against those natural philosophers, like Empedocles, who maintain that the results of natural processes which benefit organisms, such as teeth, come to be through chance (198b16–199a8). Aristotle counters by arguing that because the beneficial results of natural processes occur regularly, ‘always or for the most part’, they cannot be the outcome of chance, which would yield beneficial results only irregularly. Thus such results must come to be only for the sake of some end. This argument against chance has received the most attention from scholars, but Physics 2.8 contains another argument for the goal-directed character of nature, which has received relatively little attention because it does not seem to offer much argument for natural teleology. The argument depends upon an analogy between action and nature, and it simply maintains that since human action (of which art is an example) and nature are analogous, and since action is goal-directed, so too is nature. The argument is of interest, despite its neglect, because it seems to prove nothing to us and yet Aristotle puts it forward confidently as advancing his view about the goal-directed character of nature. The argument from analogy should claim our attention because it provides important evidence for the basic spring behind Aristotle's natural teleology. The fact that Aristotle takes for granted the strength of the analogy with human action in his argument for the goal-directedness of nature suggests that he holds human-like goal-directedness to be a condition of intelligibility that must be met by any intelligible process of coming to be, whether human or natural.

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CUNEO, TERENCE. "Another look at divine hiddenness." Religious Studies 49, no. 2 (April 3, 2013): 151–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034412513000048.

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AbstractIn his fine book The Wisdom to Doubt, J. L. Schellenberg builds a case for religious scepticism by advancing a version of the Hiddenness Argument. This argument rests on the claim that God could not love, in an admirable way, those who seek God while also remaining hidden from them. In this article, I distinguish two arguments for this claim. Neither argument succeeds, I contend, as each rests on an unsatisfactory understanding of the nature of admirable love, whether human or divine.

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22

McGrew, Lydia. "Four (Or So) New Fine-Tuning Arguments." European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8, no. 2 (June 21, 2016): 85–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v8i2.59.

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Both proponents and opponents of the argument for the deliberate fine-tuning, by an intelligent agent, of the fundamental constants of the universe have accepted certain assumptions about how the argument will go. These include both treating the fine-tuning of the constants as constitutive of the nature of the universe itself and conditioning on the fact that the constants actually do fall into the life-permitting range, rather than on the narrowness of the range. It is also generally assumed that the fine-tuning argument should precede biological arguments for design from, e.g., the origin of life. I suggest four new arguments, two of which are different orderings of the same data. Each of these abandons one or more of the common assumptions about how the fine-tuning argument should go, and they provide new possibilities for answering or avoiding objections to the fine-tuning argument.

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Gordon, Kelly. "Mobilizing Victimhood: Situating the Victim in Canadian Conservatism." Canadian Journal of Political Science 54, no. 1 (February 11, 2021): 41–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008423920001031.

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AbstractThis article offers an examination of the discursive significance of the “victim” in the Conservative Party of Canada through a critical discourse analysis of two key pieces of legislation (Bill C-10 and Bill C-36) tabled by the Harper Conservative government. The central argument contends that while all populist arguments may be a form of victim argument, not all conservative victim arguments are populist—particularly ones directed at issues related to women and gender equality. The article finds that, perhaps due to the reactive nature of conservative ideology, conservative politicians in Canada adopt an “ambidextrous” approach to victims—mobilizing two distinct and, at times, contrasting sets of arguments. The article concludes by proposing two possible explanations for this ambidexterity, one stemming from the literature on organizational management and the other from theorizations of the reactive nature of conservative ideology.

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Plebani, Matteo. "The indispensability argument and the nature of mathematical objects." THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science 33, no. 2 (June 20, 2018): 249. http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/theoria.17613.

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I will contrast two conceptions of the nature of mathematical objects: the conception of mathematical objects as preconceived objects (Yablo 2010), and heavy duty platonism (Knowles 2015). I will argue that friends of the indispensability argument are committed to some metaphysical theses and that one promising way to motivate such theses is to adopt heavy duty platonism. On the other hand, combining the indispensability argument with the conception of mathematical objects as preconceived objects yields an unstable position. The conclusion is that the metaphysical commitments of the indispensability argument should be carefully scrutinized.

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Hallam, Susan, and Hazel Francis. "An exploration of postgraduate students’ conceptions of the nature of argument." Psychology: the Journal of the Hellenic Psychological Society 17, no. 4 (October 15, 2020): 343. http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/psy_hps.23772.

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Study at postgraduate level requires the development of the skills of argument in developing both theoretical and empirical work. This study aimed to explore conceptions of argument among post-graduate students using qualitative methods within a quasi-experimental design. Thirty nine students, divided into two groups, participated. Eachgroup completed two tasks in a different order. Task 1 required each student to describe in writing how an argument might be used to add to knowledge and to list any characteristic structural features of an argument. Task 2 required the reading of a short text which was then evaluated in relation to its use of argument. For each task, small group discussion of differences, similarities and changes in views was tape-recorded. The findings showed considerable agreement regarding the main characteristics of an argument but variability in how argument was perceived to add to knowledge. The findings are discussed in relation to the work of Kuhn (1991) and in terms of their educational implications.

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Bondy, Patrick. "Truth and Argument Evaluation." Informal Logic 30, no. 2 (July 20, 2010): 142. http://dx.doi.org/10.22329/il.v30i2.2931.

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We are all familiar with the traditional conception of what makes for a good argument: that its premises are true and that it is valid.[1] That traditional view of the goodness of arguments has sustained serious criticism over the past few decades, so that most theorists have dropped either the validity requirement or the truth requirement or both. Almost all theorists that I am aware of take it that an argument is good if it fulfills its purpose, and it is widely agreed that arguments can fulfill their purpose even when not all of their premises are true, or they are not deductively valid. Still, some theorists retain a focus on the truth-directed nature of arguments, and those theorists rightly hold that, given such a focus, truth plays an important role in the evaluation of arguments. Johnson (2000) goes so far as to reintroduce truth as a constraint on premise adequacy, alongside the criterion of acceptability, and he holds that in a case where a premise is false but acceptable, truth (/falsity) outweighs acceptability. What I propose to do in this essay is to discuss the role that truth plays in the evaluation of arguments, when the purpose of arguments is understood as truth-directed in some important way. I begin with a discussion of truth and the purpose of arguments. In the second section of the paper, I give an argument to the effect that the theory of argument evaluation ought not to involve truth as a constraint on premise adequacy. The third section contains my argument for the positive claim that the proper place for the concept of truth is in the metatheory in terms of which the theory of evaluation is worked out.[2] I conclude the essay with a response to Hamblin’s (1970) argument that no arguments are truth-directed. [1] Hitchcock (1999) traces the concept of soundness in the textbook tradition to Black (1946), and before that (but with different terminology), to Cohen and Nagel (1934). [2] By "theory of evaluation" I mean the set of criteria that a theory provides us with for evaluating arguments. By "the metatheory" in terms of which the theory of evaluation is worked out, I mean the broader theory of argument, including reference to what it is that the criteria for argument evaluation are supposed to accomplish, in which the theory of evaluation is articulated.

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BYLUND, PER L. "RONALD COASE’S “NATURE OF THE FIRM” AND THE ARGUMENT FOR ECONOMIC PLANNING." Journal of the History of Economic Thought 36, no. 3 (July 17, 2014): 305–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1053837214000352.

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Ronald Coase was in his early twenties when he developed his groundbreaking theory of the firm. This theory represented a new approach with no obvious precursors, but from where did it arise? This article traces the origins of Coase’s theory of the firm and provides a context for its formation. I argue that Coase’s arguments were rooted in the exchange of ideas in the Socialist Calculation Debate, and that, in this context, one could read his theory of the firm as an argument in defense of economic planning.

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Knaster, Stephen M. "How the Self-Defeating Argument Against Determinism Defeats Itself." Dialogue 25, no. 2 (1986): 239–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0012217300048770.

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There is a well-known argument which is an attempt to show that all arguments in favour of determinism are self-defeating. Proponents of the Determinism-Is-Self-Defeating Argument (hereafter referred to as DISDA) claim that all pro-deterministic arguments, if successful, undermine rationality and epistemic justification. Indeed, the proponents of DISDA claim that since the truth of determinism implies that we cannot claim to know the truth of any proposition, then it follows, of course, that proponents of determinism cannot claim to know that determinism is itself true. Hence, the self-defeating nature of determinism.

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Razeev, D. N. "On derivative consequence argument." Omsk Scientific Bulletin. Series Society. History. Modernity 5, no. 4 (2020): 66–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.25206/2542-0488-2020-5-4-66-68.

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The article gives critical remarks to the derivative consequence argument proposed by Bogdan Faul. The first critical remark concerns the ontological status of the laws of nature, the second remark deals with the term «physicalism». It is demonstrated that conceptual vagueness of the terms used by B. Faul in his article undermines the validity of the proposed derivative argument

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Keaton, Douglas. "Kim's Supervenience Argument and the Nature of Total Realizers." European Journal of Philosophy 20, no. 2 (May 6, 2010): 243–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2010.00411.x.

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Macleod, Christopher. "Truth, Discussion, and Free Speech in On Liberty II." Utilitas 33, no. 2 (March 19, 2021): 150–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0953820821000030.

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AbstractIn this article, I offer a reading of On Liberty II which focuses on the structural features of the argument that Mill presents. Mill's argument, I suggest, is grounded on an appeal to the value of truth, and is divided into three sub-arguments, treating true, false and partially true opinion respectively. In section 1, I consider what constraints the teleological orientation of Mill's argument places on the case he makes, before examining in section 2 what the division of Mill's argument into three exhaustive sub-arguments tells us about the nature of ‘discussion’ as Mill uses the term. I go on, in section 3, to suggest that although On Liberty II does not offer a defence of free speech in the broad sense in which the term is often now used, we should be optimistic about the chances of finding such a defence in On Liberty III.

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Chapman, Arthur. "Taking the perspective of the other seriously? understanding historical argument." Educar em Revista, no. 42 (December 2011): 95–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0104-40602011000500007.

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This paper discusses the nature of argument and its role and importance in historical learning. The paper describes pedagogic strategies developed to help school pupils understand what argument is, model how arguments work and think about how arguments can be evaluated. These strategies are explained as generic critical thinking strategies and the article then demonstrates how these strategies can be applied in history education contexts. The strategies that the article describes aim to make the logical relationships that are embodied in arguments clear to students through the use of analogies and active learning strategies that seek, first, to enable students to represent logical relationships in concrete ways and, second, to help students manipulate and explore these relationships.

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Papazian, Michael. "The Ontological Argument of Diogenes of Babylon." Phronesis 52, no. 2 (2007): 188–209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852807x180072.

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AbstractAn argument for the existence of gods given by the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon and reported by Sextus Empiricus appears to be an ancient version of the ontological argument. In this paper I present a new reconstruction of Diogenes' argument that differs in certain important respects from the reconstruction presented by Jacques Brunschwig. I argue that my reconstruction makes better sense of how Diogenes' argument emerged as a response to an attack on an earlier Stoic argument presented by Zeno of Citium. Diogenes' argument as reconstructed here is an example of a modal ontological argument that makes use of the concept of being of such a nature as to exist. I argue that this concept is a modal concept that is based on the Philonian definition of possibility, and thus that Diogenes' argument is a source of important evidence about the use of non-Stoic modalities in the post-Chrysippean Stoa. I conclude by arguing that the objections made against considering Diogenes' argument as ontological are unfounded and that Diogenes' argument clearly resembles modern versions of modal ontological arguments.

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Terzis, George. "Darwall's Kantian Argument." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18, no. 1 (March 1988): 99–114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00455091.1988.10717168.

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In Impartial Reason, Stephen Darwall presents an account of rational agency in which reasons to act are both motivational and normative in nature. On the one hand, they are facts about an action reflective awareness of which can genuinely influence preference and conduct. On the other hand, they are also capable of justifying action, of showing in an all-things-considered sense that a particular action is at least as choiceworthy as are alternatives to it. Furthermore, these two aspects of reasons to act are intimately related, since, ideally, at any rate, an agent's conduct is motivated by his awareness of himself as a particular subject of a given set of norms.

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Bodlović, Petar. "Presumptions, and How They Relate to Arguments from Ignorance." Argumentation 33, no. 4 (September 11, 2019): 579–604. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10503-019-09498-8.

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Abstract By explaining the argument from ignorance in terms of the presumption of innocence, many textbooks in argumentation theory suggest that some arguments from ignorance might share essential features with some types of presumptive reasoning. The stronger version of this view, suggesting that arguments from ignorance and presumptive reasoning are almost indistinguishable, is occasionally proposed by Douglas Walton. This paper explores the nature and limits of the stronger proposal and argues that initial presumptions and arguments from ignorance are not closely connected. There are three main reasons. First, the argument from ignorance, unlike typical presumptive reasoning, is a negative kind of inference. Second, the typical initial presumption is sensitive to a broader set of defeaters and thus assumes a higher (negative) standard of acceptability. Third, in dialectical terms, initial presumption and argument from ignorance bring different attacking rights and obligations. I conclude that Waltonian intuition is unsupported or, at best, is limited only to practical presumptions and practical arguments from ignorance.

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Osuala, Amaobi Nelson. "A philosophical examination of the concept and nature of suicide as a socio-ethical issue." International Journal of Humanities and Innovation (IJHI) 2, no. 4 (December 31, 2019): 144–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.33750/ijhi.v2i4.57.

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This paper critically examines the nature of suicide as a contemporary Socio-ethical issue. It argues that the phenomenon of suicide is one that can be understood from varied standpoints, especially where it refers to the reasons why most people contemplate suicide. In this paper, I tried to show those moments in which the notion of suicide seems to project ambivalence based on some foundational ethical principles, some of which seem to justify or condemn the act of suicide. Some of the arguments thus examined include amongst others, the theological argument, domino argument, legal principles, justice argument, and utilitarian principle etcetera. It was against this backdrop that I took a bent and reached a crescendo in which case I maintained that the notion of suicide runs contrary to the fundamental ethical value of traditional Igbo aborigines of the complementary system of thought, the latter who avers that ndu bu isi (life is of supreme value). It was upon this premise as well as other principles of human co-existential experience that I condemned the act of suicide. I employed the philosophical tools of skeptic-critical evaluation cum analysis to arrive at this conclusive conclusion.

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Pécharman, Martine. "Kenelm Digby on Quantity as Divisibility." Vivarium 58, no. 3 (April 15, 2020): 191–218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685349-12341384.

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Abstract Kenelm Digby’s Two Treatises, of the Nature of Bodies and of the Nature of Mans Soule (1644) defends quite an idiosyncratic approach to mind-body dualism. In his use of the divisibility argument to prove that the human soul cannot be a material substance, Digby takes an uncompromising stand for merely potential material parts. In his Treatise of Bodies the present article focuses on the mode of construction of the definition of quantity as divisibility and on its links to two distinct fundamental arguments against the actual material parts doctrine. The first, positive, argument consists of a semantic reason drawn from Digby’s general doctrine of meaning, whereas the second, negative, argument, addresses the traditional question of the composition of the continuum. The latter, the author contends, does not build on the medieval controversy itself, but on Digby’s opposition to Galileo’s claim of indivisibilism in his Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences (1638).

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Demin, T. S. "To what theories of laws of nature B. Faul’s argument is applicable?" Omsk Scientific Bulletin. Series Society. History. Modernity 5, no. 4 (2020): 69–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.25206/2542-0488-2020-5-4-69-71.

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The derivative argument of the consequences is aimed at proving the incompatibility of certain theories of the laws of nature in conjunction with physicalism and the existence of moral responsibility. In this text, it is outlined the applicability of this argument to the most famous theories of the laws of nature. The argument can only be directed to those theories that are pinched by realism regarding the laws of nature. This text demonstrates that the most promising targets for the argument are Armstrong’s theory as well as some of the nonreductive theories of the laws of nature

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Vega Gómez, Juan. "SOBRE THE TAPESTRY OF REASON: AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF COHERENCE AND ITS ROLE IN LEGAL ARGUMENT, DE AMALIA AMAYA." Isonomía - Revista de teoría y filosofía del derecho, no. 46 (April 30, 2017): 131–218. http://dx.doi.org/10.5347/46.2017.56.

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En su libro The Tapestry of Reason: An Inquiry into the Nature of Coherence and its Role in Legal Argument,1 Amalia Amaya argumenta las ventajas de adoptar una postura coherentista en el derecho. Concretamente, su tesis principal es la siguiente...

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Goudas, Theodosis, Christos Louizos, Georgios Petasis, and Vangelis Karkaletsis. "Argument Extraction from News, Blogs, and the Social Web." International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools 24, no. 05 (October 2015): 1540024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0218213015400242.

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Argument extraction is the task of identifying arguments, along with their components in text. Arguments can be usually decomposed into a claim and one or more premises justifying it. Among the novel aspects of this work is the thematic domain itself which relates to Social Media, in contrast to traditional research in the area, which concentrates mainly on law documents and scientific publications. The huge increase of social media communities, along with their user tendency to debate, makes the identification of arguments in these texts a necessity. Argument extraction from Social Media is more challenging because texts may not always contain arguments, as is the case of legal documents or scientific publications usually studied. In addition, being less formal in nature, texts in Social Media may not even have proper syntax or spelling. This paper presents a two-step approach for argument extraction from social media texts. During the first step, the proposed approach tries to classify the sentences into “sentences that contain arguments” and “sentences that don’t contain arguments”. In the second step, it tries to identify the exact fragments that contain the premises from the sentences that contain arguments, by utilizing conditional random fields. The results exceed significantly the base line approach, and according to literature, are quite promising.

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Allori, Valia. "Scientific Realism and Primitive Ontology Or: The Pessimistic Induction and the Nature of the Wave Function." Lato Sensu: Revue de la Société de philosophie des sciences 5, no. 1 (September 27, 2018): 69–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.20416/lsrsps.v5i1.10.

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In this paper, I wish to connect the recent debate in the philosophy of quantum mechanics concerning the nature of the wave function to the historical debate in the philosophy of science regarding the tenability of scientific realism. Advocating realism about quantum mechanics is particularly challenging when focusing on the wave function. According to the wave function ontology approach, the wave function is a concrete physical entity. In contrast, according to an alternative viewpoint, namely the primitive ontology approach, the wave function does not represent physical objects. In this paper, I argue that the primitive ontology approach can naturally be interpreted as an instance of the so-called explanationist realism, which has been proposed as a response to the pessimistic-meta induction argument against scientific realism. If my arguments are sound, then one could conclude that: (1) contrary to what is commonly thought, if explanationism realism is a good response to the pessimistic-meta induction argument, it can be straightforwardly extended also to the quantum domain; (2) the primitive ontology approach is in better shape than the wave function ontology approach in resisting the pessimistic-meta induction argument against scientific realism.

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Faroldi, Federico L. G., and Tudor Protopopescu. "A hyperintensional logical framework for deontic reasons." Logic Journal of the IGPL 27, no. 4 (June 4, 2019): 411–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jigpal/jzz012.

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Abstract In this paper we argue that normative reasons are hyperintensional and put forward a formal account of this thesis. That reasons are hyperintensional means that a reason for a proposition does not imply that it is also a reason for a logically equivalent proposition. In the first part we consider three arguments for the hyperintensionality of reasons: (i) an argument from the nature of reasons, (ii) an argument from substitutivity and (iii) an argument from explanatory power. In the second part we describe a hyperintensional logic of reasons based on justification logics. Eventually we discuss the philosophical import of this proposal and highlight some limitations and possible developments.

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Werner, Daniel. "Suicide in the Phaedo." Rhizomata 6, no. 2 (November 27, 2018): 157–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/rhiz-2018-0008.

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Abstract In the Phaedo the character Socrates argues that suicide is morally wrong. This is in fact one of only two places in the entire Platonic corpus where suicide is discussed. It is a brief passage, and a notoriously perplexing one. In this article, I distinguish between two arguments that Socrates gives in support of his claim. I argue that one of them (what I call the Gods Argument) is not to be taken literally, while the other (what I call the Prison Argument) represents the deeper reason for the prohibition of suicide. I further relate the question of suicide to the overarching concerns of the Phaedo as a whole: the nature of our incarnate “imprisonment”, the nature and purpose of philosophy, the philosophical “purification” of the soul, the human pursuit of knowledge, and the nature of the divine.

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Gilbert, Kara. "A comparison of argument structures in L1 and L2 student writing." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 14, no. 1 (March 8, 2004): 55–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.14.1.05gil.

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The study consisted of an investigation into the argument structures employed in the English academic writing of Japanese native speakers and Australian English native speakers in the Arts (humanities) faculty of an Australian university. In order to investigate naturally occurring written argument structures, an in-depth case-study analysis of a small number of coursework essays was conducted. The complexity of argument structures in terms of the elaboration of individual arguments and the relational links between multiple related arguments of extended persuasive discourse were examined. Consequently, the similarities and differences between the L1 and L2 argumentative structures in the English essays and the nature of argument in English native speaker and Japanese ESL writing were identified. The findings indicate that although there were some differences between the micro- and macro-structures of written arguments in the coursework essays of L1 and L2 students, there were also similarities across both groups of writers. This may suggest that the context of learning plays a role in shaping the argumentative discourse patterns of written texts, which has significant implications not only for L2 writers learning the conventions of English discourse in an academic environment but also for future research investigating forms of written argument.

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West, Thomas G. "THE GROUND OF LOCKE'S LAW OF NATURE." Social Philosophy and Policy 29, no. 2 (July 2012): 1–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0265052511000392.

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AbstractThis essay will show that Locke’s teaching on the law of nature is not based on divine revelation, or a juridical doctrine of individual rights, or self-ownership, or self-preservation, or reasoning from premises that are not rooted in the empirical world. I will argue, on the contrary, that the real ground is found in his understanding of the conditions of human happiness. This conclusion is far from evident on the surface of Locke’s writings. Locke draws his reader into an amazingly complex line of reasoning, scattered up and down in several of his books, leading finally to the real basis of his teaching on the law of nature. Locke engages the reader in a dialogue, in which initially plausible arguments are put forward, then implicitly questioned, leading to new arguments, which again are questioned, and so on. Locke says that “long and sometimes intricate deductions of reason” are necessary to discover the law of nature. Locke writes treatises, not Platonic dialogues. Nevertheless, a dialogical thread will take us from one of Locke’s books to another, until we put together all the relevant passages to show the complete picture of his argument.

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Poirier, John C. "Conceptual Possibilities and Nonpossibilities for the Nature of Meaning." Pneuma 42, no. 2 (August 24, 2020): 220–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700747-bja10002.

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Abstract Scott Ellington recently discussed my view of hermeneutics at some length, but unfortunately misrepresented my argument. Ellington’s misrepresentation has led to misunderstanding concerning my real concerns, and I come across sounding more or less like just another dyed-in-the-wool Hirschian—when in fact I reject E.D. Hirsch’s central arguments and follow a very different line of reasoning. I respond to Ellington by reexplaining the philosophical grounds for an intentionalist hermeneutic of Scripture, and the real conceptual unavailability of other views of textual meaning—including the view Ellington adopts. I give particular attention to the ‘conceptual creep’ afflicting Ellington’s view, and to the confusion (for him and others) caused by the multidefinitionality of the word ‘meaning’.

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KELAHAN, EMILY. "Another look at Hume's treatment of the argument from design in the Natural History of Religion." Religious Studies 52, no. 4 (July 8, 2016): 461–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034412516000068.

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AbstractThis article argues that Hume's seemingly peculiar treatment of the argument from design in his Natural History of Religion is not indicative of a radical, or even modest, shift in his overall epistemic evaluation of it. His focus is on the argument's impact on the psychology of religious believers, and not its rational acceptability. Hume never strays far from his stated intention for the work, to engage in a socio-psychological analysis of the nature of religious belief, including a thorough assessment of the role of the argument from design. Hume concludes that the argument is inconsequential to religious belief formation.

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Ashbach, Jonathan. "The Phenomenological Moral Argument." Philosophia Christi 21, no. 1 (2019): 135–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/pc201921114.

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The moral argument for the existence of God is a popular and rhetorically effective element of natural theology, but both its traditional ontological and epistemological forms rely upon controversial premises. This article proposes a new variant—the phenomenological moral argument, or PMA—that is exclusively empirical in form. The PMA notes several empirical aspects of moral experience (seven are discussed in the version presented here) that cohere much more naturally with a theistic than with an atheistic account of conscience’s origins. It therefore concludes that divine creation best explains the nature of moral experience, and thus, that God exists.

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Grozev, Stanul. "The Argument of Nature in Shakespeare’s “As you like it”." WISDOM 2, no. 5 (December 1, 2015): 66. http://dx.doi.org/10.24234/wisdom.v2i5.37.

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This paper examines the diverse ways in which the characters of Shakespeare’s comedy “As you like it” praise or mock each other on behalf of nature. Shakespeare works during the Renaissance, when the ides of the ancient philosophers and rhetoricians are highly influential, and for this reason the argument of nature is presented with emphasis on Ancient Greek Philosophy and rhetoric. The notion of nature in the play is examined in three main aspects: (1) human nature (2) the objective reality opposing the human organic and inorganic world (3) constructive beginning, strength, God. The argument of nature in the play is examined in relation to upbringing, education and free will. Since “As you like it” is a pastoral comedy, the argument of nature is present in the very setting of the play, for this reason the last section of the study deals with the innate virtue of nature and its cleansing power over men.

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Siegwart, Geo. "Gaunilo Parodies Anselm." History of Philosophy and Logical Analysis 17, no. 1 (April 5, 2014): 45–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.30965/26664275-01701004.

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The main objective is an interpretation of the island parody, in particular a logical reconstruction of the parodying argument that stays close to the text. The parodied reasoning is identified as the proof in the second chapter of the Proslogion, more specifically, this proof as it is represented by Gaunilo in the first chapter of his Liber pro insipiente. The second task is a detailed comparison between parodied and parodying argument as well as an account of their common structure. The third objective is a tentative characterization of the nature and function of parodies of arguments. It seems that parodying does not add new pertinent points of view to the usual criticism of an argument.

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Journal articles on the topic 'Argument for nature'

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