Historical Objections Against the Number Line

Calibrating the mental number line.

Human adults are thought to possess two dissociable systems to represent numbers: an approximate quantity system akin to a mental number line, and a verbal system capable of representing numbers exactly. Here, we study the interface between these two systems using an estimation task. Observers were asked to estimate the approximate numerosity of dot arrays. We show that, in the absence of calib...

Objections to hospital philosophers.

Like morally sensitive hospital staff, philosophers resist routine simplification of morally complex cases. Like hospital clergy, they favour reflective and principled decision-making. Like hospital lawyers, they refine and extend the language we use to formulate and defend our complex decisions. But hospital philosophers are not redundant: they have a wider range of principles and categories a...

Conscientious objections to reform.

Objections, Rebuttals and Refutations

This paper considers how the terms ‘objection,’ ‘rebuttal,’ ‘attack,’ ‘refutation,’ ‘rebutting defeater’ and ‘undercutting defeater’ (often referred to as rebutters versus undercutters) are used in writings on argumentation and artificial intelligence. The central focus is on the term ‘rebuttal.’ A provisional classification system is proposed that provides a normative structure within which th...

The Diversity of Objections to Inequality

goal-conformity to a certain pattern-to which special moral value is auached.2 I will begin by distinguishing what seem to me to be the fundamental moral reasons lying behind our objections to various forms of inequality. I will then illustrate these ideas by showing how they figure in various ways in Rawls's views about distributive justice. Finally, I will return to examine one of these value...