Scheme,” Donald Davidson argues against the logical possibility of conceptual schemes. Believing it a remnant of the incomplete eradication of dogma in the empiricist tradition, Davidson wishes to undermine what he believes is the source of talk of conceptual relativism: the third dogma of scheme-content duality. Building on Quine, he constructs an argument intended to illustrate the peculiar p...

Richard Levins has advocated the scientific merits of qualitative modeling throughout his career. He believed an excessive and uncritical focus on emulating the models used by physicists and maximizing quantitative precision was hindering biological theorizing in particular. Greater emphasis on qualitative properties of modeled systems would help counteract this tendency, and Levins subsequentl...

A major criticism of goals such as self-actualization is that they are too general, broad, and amorphous to be useful. The behaviorists, particularly, ask for operational definitions in terms of specific behaviors. This is a legitimate question. If a concept is significant and pertinent, it can, at least in principle or eventually, be reduced to specific, objective, or measurable variables. How...

This paper begins by summarizing and distilling MacIntyre’s sweeping critique of modern busi­ ness. It identifies the crux of MacIntyre’s critique as centering on the fundamental Aristotelian concepts of internal goods and practices. MacIntyre essentially follows Aristotle in arguing that by privileging external goods over internal goods, business activity – and certainly modern capitalistic bu...

I have great sympathy with the thoughts of Lipton and Ødegaard [1] – the assessment and communication of "causal" associations is a source of continual frustration for epidemiologists. The authors' lucid account of the use of causal language in epidemiology can essentially (if rather unflatteringly) be simplified to the following: it is impossible to prove that X causes Y; the statement "Smokin...

we show that the category of convergence approach spaces is a simultaneously reective and coreective subcategory of the category of latticevalued limit spaces. further we study the preservation of diagonal conditions, which characterize approach spaces. it is shown that the category of preapproach spaces is a simultaneously reective and coreective subcategory of the category of lattice-valued p...

Abstract Faced with hate speech, oppressed groups can use their own speech to respond verbal oppressors. This “counterspeech,” however, sometimes itself takes on a hateful form. paper explores the moral standing of such “hateful counterspeech.” Is there fundamental asymmetry between counterspeech, and utterances dominant or oppressive groups? Or are claims that an exists indefensible? I argue f...

urbanisation is still one of the social themes in developing countries. in china, the rapid process of urbanisation and economic growth bring to people not only more opportunities for creating new life and pursuing happiness, but also the challenge to face various and complex social, economical and environmental problems. among them some are outstanding, like the shrinking plowland devoured by ...