Civil Procedure as a Critical Discussion

This Article develops a model for analyzing legal dispute resolution systems as systems for argumentation. Our model meshes two theories of argument conceived centuries apart: contemporary argumentation theory and classical stasis theory. In this Article, we apply the model to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as a proof of concept. Specifically, the model analyzes how the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure function as a staged argumentative critical discussion designed to permit judge and jury to rationally resolve litigants’ differences in a reasonable manner. At a high level, this critical discussion has three phases: a confrontation, an (extended) opening, and a concluding phase. Those phases are the umbrella under which discrete argumentation phases occur at points we call stases. Whenever litigants seek a ruling or judgment, they reach a stasis—a stopping or standing point for arguing procedural points of disagreement. During these stases, the parties make arguments that fall into predictable “commonplace” argument types. Taken together, these stock argument types form a taxonomy of arguments for all civil cases. Our claim that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure function as a system for argumentation is novel, as is our claim that civil cases breed a taxonomy of argument types. These claims also mark the beginning of a broader project. Starting here with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, we embark on a journey that we expect to follow for several years (and which we hope other scholars will join), exploring our model’s application across dispute resolution systems and using it to make normative claims about those systems. From a birds-eye view, this Article also represents a short modern trek in a much longer journey begun by advocates in city states in and near Greece nearly 2500 years ago

Magical urbanism:Walter Benjamin and utopian realism in the film Ratcatcher

Deploys Walter Benjamin to discuss fantastical representations of childhood and class in the film Ratcatcher

The Performance of Dialysis Care: Routinization and Adaptation on the Floor

Previous studies of communication in dialysis centers primarily focused on communication between nurses and patients. In this study, ethnographic methods were used to explore the dominant communication performances enacted by dialysis staff members, including registered nurses, patient care technicians, technical aides, a social worker, and a dietitian. Findings suggest a dialectic between extreme routinization of care and continual adaptation. The dominant routine involved repeating the same preparation, treatment, and discharge process 3 shifts per day, thrice weekly for each patient. At the same time, near-constant adjustments to scheduling, coordination of tasks, and problem solving were needed to maintain the performance of repetition. The balancing of this dialectic has significant implications for new staff training and socialization, understanding the role of technology and routine in dialysis and in health care systems more generally, and in further theorizing the role of unbounded communication interactions in health care

Higgs boson and the Cosmos: A philosophical reappraisal of the authoritative Catholic and Greek-Orthodox perspectives

The theoretical prediction of Higgs boson was arguably one of the most important contributions in particle physics in the 20th century, with significant implications for modern cosmology. Its reported discovery in 2012 was celebrated as one of the most significant scientific achievements of all times. The fierce public discourse that followed was at large ignited by the media-hyped nickname “God particle” attributed to Higgs boson. The debate regarding the science-religion relation reinvigorated once again and plenty theologically informed views were expressed. In this paper, I take into consideration the authoritative views expressed by the Catholic Church and the Greek-Orthodox Church and I discuss them in comparison with each other, as well as in juxtaposition with other views expressed in the public discussion on the issue, in an attempt to draw philosophically interesting inferences

Dialectic of eros and myth of the soul in Plato's Phaedrus

In this paper, I question a widespread reading of a passage in the last part of the Phaedrus dealing with the science of dialectic. According to this reading, the passage announces a new method peculiar to the later Plato aiming at defining natural kinds. I show that the Phaedrus itself does not support such a reading. As an alternative reading, I suggest that the science of dialectic, as discussed in the passage, must be seen as dealing primarily with philosophical rhetoric and knowledge of human souls

A Way to Describe and Evaluate Thought Experiments, or Trying to Get a Grip on Virtual Reality

The use of thought experiments seems to provoke much controversy, often in the form of charges of appeals to intuition. The notion of intuition, however, is vaguely defined in both the context of thought experiments and in philosophy in general. This vagueness suggests that the description of thought experiments is incomplete, and thus the prospect for their evaluation remains unfulfilled. Previous analyses of thought experiments have come largely from philosophy where the focus has been on truth value and validity. But these approaches seem to view argument monologically; no accommodation of an audience response like intuition is possible. I try to show that van Eemeren and Grootendorst\u27s pragma-dialectical model provides a framework for analyzing thought experiments and evaluating them because it treats thought experiments as part of a dialogue and as the result of a perspective

Catholicity in the Lutheran ministry

The second of two articles (for the first article see Consensus 5,23-28 o 79) dealing with the history and tradition of the Lutheran ministry, this article demonstrates that the centrality of the doctrine of justification, as understood by the Reformers, does not interrupt but undergirds the historic continuity of a Lutheran understanding of the ministry. Support for this view is found in the self-understanding of the Augsburg Confession, which links its articulation of the Christian faith to the great consensus expressed in the classic Christian creeds and affirmed in the centrality of the Pauline doctrine of justification

Concept Development In Relation To The Biology Of Reproduction In Secondary Science : A Vygotskyan Perspective

The study of concept development in biology comes from a professional concern that arose in my classroom teaching - an inability, after many years practice of the techniques of ‘discovery science’, to accept the theoretical base of the individual secondary school pupil constructing science concepts mainly through experiment. From this concern arose my research question - the extent to which a developmental space could be defined in which the development of science concepts could take place. The instance for examining such a space would be science concepts of reproduction. To develop a model for such a space I looked at the work of Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and a number of other theorists concerned with the issue of innate learning mechanisms and of constructivism and social constructivism. I adopted Vygotsky’s dialectical materialist approach in assessing the concepts involved. To test the emerging model I decided on a case study approach, defined in terms of both the case as instance and the case as issue - instance in that the focus would be a year 8 (Britain year 7) science class, with interviews across the year group The study would involve the case as issue in that I intended to walk through the process of concept formation in plant and human reproduction with the pupils. I applied a mixture of semi-structured interview and classroom observation, linked through the development of ‘structured situations’ in which models and materials were made available in specific social settings in the expectation that the pupils would construct meaning. The outcome of the investigation did not support the initial model, but it did suggest in outline a new model of a developmental space. This suggested that the different goals of teacher and pupils expressed themselves as implicit and explicit elements of the situation, often resolved by the pupils completing tasks without thought. This indicated that a common outcome of schooling was ‘encapsulation’, formal mental constructs lacking meaning. Elements of a new model would be the role of emotion and of the goal of activity