Public participation as a factor in the development of policy : a case study of the KwaZulu-Natal Waste Management Policy process, 1996- 2001.

Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002.This study reviews some of the trends in the theory and practice of public participation processes as an element of policy development. It attempts to locate public participation within a theoretical framework for policy development based on the work of Kingdon (Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, 2nd ed. 1995) on policy streams, and that of Roe (Narrative Policy Analysis. 1994) on the use of discourse analysis. It uses the KwaZulu-Natal Waste Management Policy process as a case study and shows that it is possible to combine these two theories to come to a better understanding of the way in which policy is arrived at. The policy streams proposed by Kingdon are identified in the case study and the 'crisis', which moved the issue of waste management onto the decision agenda, is described. Two dominant narratives that emerge from a series of interviews are discerned, together with two counter narratives. By comparing and contrasting these a metanarrative is developed that meets Roe's criteria for telling a better story and so becomes the basis for the final policy. Public participation is shown as being a useful way of ensuring that alternative 'stories' are included in the shaping of policy and so allowing a metanarrative to emerge. Some conclusions about the implications of the analysis for future processes are drawn

Arguement in the humanities: A knowledge based approach

In this thesis I have a threefold purpose. I will attempt: (a) to present a generic design for a tool - the Argument Support Program - which can be of use in supporting the reasoning of archaeologists (and others especially, but not exclusively, in the humanities); (b) I will present a model of argumentation and debate as the theoretical orientation within which the model is developed; and, (c) I will suggest that this approach is a natural development of several strands of research within the artificial intelligence community. A tripartite model of argument is presented in terms of arguers, the argument structure produced and the argument domain or field. This model subsumes reasoning, interpretation and argument exchange or debate. It is maintained, further, that while this model is generally applicable, specific domains have particular styles of argument. The notion of argument style is discussed in terms of the types of reasoning used. The related concept of relevance in argument is discussed in terms of the specific tokens of these types which may be used in a particular argument. It is argued that archaeology is characterized, at least in part, by the use of argument by analogy and argument from theoretical principles or models. A design for a generic program - the Argument Support Program (ASP) - based on the theoretical principles is delineated. Details of the partial implementation of the model as a constrained debater in the domain of archaeology (ASP for archaeology or ASParch) are presented. Example runs which illustrate how the characterizing features of archaeology are dealt with are also presented as are examples of the various domain and system knowledge bases needed. The application of ASPs to other domains and areas such as literary criticism, legal reasoning and Darwinian theory is discussed. In the final chapter, the achievements and inadequacies of this research are summarized, possible reasons are presented for the inadequacies in the resulting system and future directions discussed

Reconciling dichotomies in higher education : theoretical and practical implications of an interactive educational conception.

Recent decades have witnessed the growing emergence of a conception of higher learning as entailing the interaction of individual tendencies with physical and social conditions. The present study explores the theoretical and practical implications of this conception across several key areas of the literature, including higher education reform, critical thinking, moral education, college writing, and college teaching. Generally speaking, educational interactionism is the attempt to explain intellectual and moral growth in terms of the ongoing and reciprocal interaction of human beings and their physical and social environments. It accordingly seeks to reconcile the historical antipathy between inner-directed theories (rationalism, idealism, romanticism) and outer-directed theories (empiricism, positivism, essentialism) of human agency, meaning, and growth. In terms of educational practice, educational interactionism seeks to resolve the persistent tension between attention to students\u27 individual needs and interests and the transmission of a socially viable body of subject matter. It does so chiefly by asserting that neither has any meaning without the other. In projecting this interactive conception across what are for the most part discrete literatures, the present study seeks to illustrate how similar principles operate across these areas and to encourage dialogue between them. It should be viewed as a first step in a larger effort to integrate and clarify the general features of an interactive educational conception, eliminate many present inconsistencies, and outline its implications for educational policy and teaching practice

An Integrated Approach for Generating Arguments and Rebuttals and Understanding Rejoinders

This paper describes an integrated approach for interpreting a user's responses and generating replies in the framework of a WWW-based Bayesian argumentation system. Our system consults a user model which represents a user's beliefs, inferences and attentional focus, as well as the system's certainty regarding the user's beliefs. The interpretation mechanism takes into account these factors to infer the intended effect of the user's response on the system's argument

A Connectionist Defence of the Inscrutability Thesis and the Elimination of the Mental

This work consists of two parts. In Part I (chapters 1-5), I shall produce a Connectionist Defence of Quine's Thesis of the Inscrutability of Reference, according to which there is no objective fact of the matter as to what the ontological commitments of the speakers of a language are. I shall start by reviewing Quine's project in his original behaviouristic setting. Chapters 1, and 2 will be devoted to addressing several criticisms that Gareth Evans, and Crispin Wright, have put forward on behalf of the friend of semantic realism. Evans (1981) and, more recendy, Wright (1997) have argued on different grounds that, under certain conditions, structural simplicity may become alethic-i.e., truth-conducive-for semantic theories. Being structurally more complex than the standard semantic theory, Quine's perverse semantic route (see chapter 1) is an easy prey for Evans' and Wright's considerations. I shall argue that both Evans' and Wright's criticisms are unmotivated, and do not jeopardize Quine's overall enterprise. I shall then propose a perverse theory of reference (chapter 3) which differs substantially from the ones advanced in the previous literature on the issue. The motivation for pursuing a different perverse semantic proposal resides in the fact that the route I shall be offering is as simple, structurally speaking, as our sanctioned theory of reference is meant to be. Thanks to this feature, my strategy is not subject to certain criticisms which may put perverse proposals a la Quine in jeopardy, thereby becoming an overall better candidate for the Quinean to fulfill her goal. In chapter 4, I shall introduce and develop a criterion recently produced by Wright (1997) in terms of 'psychological simplicity' which threatens the perverse semantic proposal I offered in chapter 3. I shall argue that a Language-of-Thought (LOT)-model of human cognition could motivate Wright's criterion. I shall then introduce the reader to some basic aspects of connectionist theory, and elaborate on a particularly promising neurocomputational approach to language processing put forward by Jeff Elman (1992; 1998). I shall argue that if instead of endorsing a LOT hypothesis, we model human cognition by a recurrent neural network a la Elman, then Wright's criterion is unmotivated. In particular, I shall argue that considerations regarding 'psychological simplicity' are neutral, favouring neither a standard theory of reference, nor a perverse one. In the remainder of Part I, I shall focus upon certain problems for the defender of the Inscrutability Thesis highlighted by the friend of connectionist theory. In chapter 5 I shall introduce a mathematical technique for measuring conceptual similarity across networks that Aarre Laakso and Gary Cottrell (1998; 2000) have recently developed. I shall show how Paul Churchland makes use of Laakso and Cottrell's results to argue that connectionism can furnish us with all we need to construct a robust theory of semantics, and a robust theory of translation-robustness that may potentially be exploited by a connectionist foe of Quine to argue against the Inscrutability Thesis. The bulk of the chapter will be devoted to showing that the notion of conceptual similarity available to the connectionist leaves room for a "connectionist Quinean" to kick in with a or\Q-io-many translational mapping across networks. In Part II (chapters 6, and 7), I shall produce a Connectionist Defence of the Thesis of Eliminative Materialism, according to which propositional attitudes don't exist (see chapter 7). I shall start by rejoining to two arguments that Stephen Stich has recently put forward against the thesis of eliminative materialism. In a nutshell, Stich (1990; 1991) argues that (i) the thesis of eliminative materialism, is neither true nor false, and that (ii) even if it were true, that would be philosophically uninteresting. To support (i) and (ii) Stich relies on two premises: (a) that the job of a theory of reference is to make explicit the tacit theory of reference which underlies our intuitions about the notion of reference itself; and (b) that our intuitive notion of reference is a highly idiosyncratic one. In chapter 6 I shall address Stich's anti-eliminativist claims (i) and (ii). I shall argue that even if we agreed with premises (a) and (b), that would lend no support whatsoever for (i) and (ii). Finally, in chapter 7, I shall introduce a connectionist-inspired conditional argument for the elimination of the posits of folk psychology put forward by William Ramsey, Stephen Stich, and Joseph Garon. I shall consider an objection to the eliminativist argument raised by Andy Clark. I shall then review a counter that Stephen Stich and Ted Warfield produce on behalf of the eliminativist. The discussion in chapter 5 on 'state space semantics and conceptual similarity' will be used to show that Clark's argument is not threatened by Stich and Warfield's considerations. Then, in the remainder of Part II, I shall offer a different line of argument to counter to Clark. A line that focuses on the notion of causal efficacy. I hope to show that the thesis of eliminativist materialism is correct. Conclusions, and directions for future research will follow