Pascal’s wager: tracking an intended reader in the structure of the argument

Pascal’s wager is the name of an argument in favor of belief in God presented by Blaise Pascal in §233 of Thoughts. Ian Hacking (1972) pointed out that Pascal’s text involves three different versions of the argument. This paper proceeds from this identification, but it concerns an examination of the rhetorical strategy realized by Pascal’s argumentation. The final form of Pascal’s argument is considered as a product that could be established only through a specific process of persuasion led with respect to an intended reader with a particular set of initial beliefs. The text uses insights from the pragma‐dialectical approach to argumentation, especially the concept of rhetorical effectiveness of particular choices from the topical potential. The argumentation structure of Pascal’s wager is considered to be a reflection of the anticipated course of dialogue with the reader critically testing the sustainability of Pascal’s standpoint “You should believe in God”. Based on the argumentation reconstruction of three versions of the argument, Pascal’s idea of opponent/audience is identified. A rhetorical analysis of the effects of his argumentative strategy is proposed. The analysis is based on two perspectives on Pascal’s argument: it examines the strategy implemented consistently by all arguments and the strategy of a formulation of different versions of the wager

Writing the Self-at-War: World War I Popular Writings as \u201cTechnologies of the Self\u201d

Based on the analysis of more than 150 diaries and memoirs, this article highlights the rhetorical strategies used to define the self and shape the idea of war that characterized a specific peasant community, the Italian-speaking soldiers from the Trentino region that fought for Austria-Hungary in World War I. Through this case study the essay discusses how the Foucauldian notion of “technology of the self” can be applied to the study of war testimonies and to the historiographical debate on the nature of World War I “war culture”. By looking at the texts not in their message but in their form and in their function for the authors the study proposes a methodology to interpret sources that have been often deemed too repetitive and hermetic to be part of a systematic historical analysis.

The Cold Peace: Russo-Western Relations as a Mimetic Cold War

In 1989–1991 the geo-ideological contestation between two blocs was swept away, together with the ideology of civil war and its concomitant Cold War played out on the larger stage. Paradoxically, while the domestic sources of Cold War confrontation have been transcended, its external manifestations remain in the form of a ‘legacy’ geopolitical contest between the dominant hegemonic power (the United States) and a number of potential rising great powers, of which Russia is one. The post-revolutionary era is thus one of a ‘cold peace’. A cold peace is a mimetic cold war. In other words, while a cold war accepts the logic of conflict in the international system and between certain protagonists in particular, a cold peace reproduces the behavioural patterns of a cold war but suppresses acceptance of the logic of behaviour. A cold peace is accompanied by a singular stress on notions of victimhood for some and undigested and bitter victory for others. The perceived victim status of one set of actors provides the seedbed for renewed conflict, while the ‘victory’ of the others cannot be consolidated in some sort of relatively unchallenged post-conflict order. The ‘universalism’ of the victors is now challenged by Russia's neo-revisionist policy, including not so much the defence of Westphalian notions of sovereignty but the espousal of an international system with room for multiple systems (the Schmittean pluriverse)

Reference fiction, and omission

In this paper, I argue that sentences that contain ‘omission’ tokens that appear to function as singular terms are meaningful while maintaining the view that omissions are nothing at all or mere absences. I take omissions to be fictional entities and claim that the way in which sentences about fictional characters are true parallels the way in which sentences about omissions are true. I develop a pragmatic account of fictional reference and argue that my fictionalist account of omissions implies a plausible account of the metaphysics of omissions

When it’s okay to hit: How Turkish and U.S. preschoolers and adults make judgments about permissible and impermissible acts of force

To navigate their complex social worlds, children need to make judgments about when, if ever, it is okay to use force against others. By adulthood, most come to condemn violence in most situations yet accept or even encourage force in other situations, such as self-defense or contact sports. This research examined key factors expected to guide how preschoolers and adults make judgments about permissible and impermissible force. These factors included the antecedent events—preceding the force act—and the emotion attributed to the victim. In four studies with Turkish and U.S. preschoolers and adults, an interviewer presented participants with vignettes in which one child used force against another. The antecedent event significantly affected children's and, to an even greater extent, adults’ judgments about force. Participants were also more likely to judge force as permissible when they attributed positive or neutral emotions to the victim. Some cultural differences also emerged. The findings shed light on how children begin to draw moral distinctions between permissible and impermissible force

A Game-Theoretic Foundation for the Maximum Software Resilience against Dense Errors

Safety-critical systems need to maintain their functionality in the presence of multiple errors caused by component failures or disastrous environment events. We propose a game-theoretic foundation for synthesizing control strategies that maximize the resilience of a software system in defense against a realistic error model. The new control objective of such a game is called $k$ -resilience. In order to be $k$ -resilient, a system needs to rapidly recover from infinitely many waves of a small number of up to $k$ close errors provided that the blocks of up to $k$ errors are separated by short time intervals, which can be used by the system to recover. We first argue why we believe this to be the right level of abstraction for safety critical systems when local faults are few and far between. We then show how the analysis of $k$ -resilience problems can be formulated as a model-checking problem of a mild extension to the alternating-time $\mu$ -calculus (AMC). The witness for $k$ resilience, which can be provided by the model checker, can be used for providing control strategies that are optimal with respect to resilience. We show that the computational complexity of constructing such optimal control strategies is low and demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through an implementation and experimental results

Looking like a hero: constructions of the female gun-fighter in Hollywood cinema.

This paper addresses the aesthetic and semiotic issues of dress, agency and desire as they are articulated around the figure of the female gun-slinger in action-driven genres. It explores the problems that this complex figure presents for feminist critics, in relation to the fetishisation of the female action figure, the potential for readings of cooption or resistance embodied in the transvestite heroine, and the celebration of cinematic violence. It also explores a number of strategies whereby film-makers and narratives contrive to contain the transgressive potential of the female gun-slinger. With particular reference to Salt (Phillip Noyce 2010), it highlights issues of transformation, performance and identity, focusing on the operation of costume as an ‘alternative discourse’ within the text. It considers the limitations and potential of the contemporary action heroine as an empowering female figure within popular culture

Digitally deconstructing a pícaro: examining the role of the Digital Humanities in the L2 learning and teaching of Lazarillo de Tormes

Master of ArtsDepartment of Modern LanguagesRebecca BenderThis paper addresses different digital strategies taken from an L2 perspective in the analysis of the classic picaresque novel, Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). I combine the strengths of two digital humanities tools in order to better bridge the cultural divide that may stand between the L2 learner and the narrative’s pícaro. This study aims to blend the use of LIWC, a digital sentiment analysis tool, with Storymap, a digital mapping software from Knightlab, in order to create a robust linguistic, historic and geographic analysis. The combination of software platforms will quantify and display the emotional associations that Lázaro, the protagonist of the novel, expresses towards each physical landmark he mentions. This analysis aims to reveal the strategies used in the first-person narrative to tie emotions, either positive or negative, to each specific location mentioned in central Spain. By plotting each place that appears in the narrative and reviewing the data of the sentiment analysis, my project is designed to better understand why the protagonist is so specific when mentioning, sites, towns, and cities both in Spain and abroad. This study effectively blends Digital Humanities tools and traditional literary analyses in order to show how the inclusion of advanced technologies in the L2 classroom has the potential to unlock cultural, historical and geographical information hidden in the target culture’s literature

The betrayal of the satirical text

Literary scholars use various methods to undermine and reject explicit declarations of the Roman verse satire. This paper argues that not only do these scholars develop some strategies to avoid facing uncomfortable messages, but that the satirical text also offers an opportunity to subvert its own utterances. Although the dialogic nature of literature (and language in general) always offers opportu-nities for subversive interpretations that refuse to accept the proclaimed ideas at face value, the satirical text has a special feature, since it tends to say what it says with some ambiguity. The paper calls this the betrayal of the satirical text, which through the very act of (humorous) textualization opens the gates for opposing or subverting interpretations. The second part of the paper analyses Satires 1.7 by Horace, underscoring how various implications of the poetic discourse create opportunities to undermine the proffered ideas. A text that seems to try to stabilize Roman elite identity may lead to a retracing of the boundaries between Romans and aliens, the elite and the pariahs