Deception in Aristotle\u27s Rhetoric: How to Tell the Rhetorician from the Sophist, and Which One To Bet On

Aristotle has a simple answer to questions about the morality of rhetoric: he distinguishes the rhetorician and the sophist. What sets the sophist apart from the rhetorician is not the faculty (dynamis) but the moral purpose (prohairesis) (I1.1355M7; see de Soph Elen 1.165a30). Keep straight the difference between sophist and rhetorician and all moral problems will evaporate. He certainly doesn\u27t think telling them apart needs great philosophical development or exquisite ethical judgment. Distinguishing them requires neither phronesis nor familiarity with the Rhetoric. He gives his distinction all the explanation he thinks it needs by saying: In rhetoric, the person who acts in accordance with knowledge (kata ten epistemeri), and the one who acts in accordance with purpose (kata ten prohaireseiri), are both called rhetoricians; but in dialectic it is the purpose that makes the sophist, the dialectician being one whose arguments rest, not on moral purpose (ou kata ten prohairesin) but on the faculty (kata ten dynamin) (b19-22). But his distinction between the rhetorician and the sophist seems too offhand for such weighty issues. We have to wonder why he thinks it adequate. Issues of morality of rhetoric are worries first about the relation between its guiding and given ends, and then between the artful and and ethical guiding ends of praxis. Aristotle\u27s discussion of truth-telling, in the Ethics, helps explicate the distinction between rhetorician and sophist

The Drosophila melanogaster host model

The deleterious and sometimes fatal outcomes of bacterial infectious diseases are the net result of the interactions between the pathogen and the host, and the genetically tractable fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has emerged as a valuable tool for modeling the pathogen–host interactions of a wide variety of bacteria. These studies have revealed that there is a remarkable conservation of bacterial pathogenesis and host defence mechanisms between higher host organisms and Drosophila. This review presents an in-depth discussion of the Drosophila immune response, the Drosophila killing model, and the use of the model to examine bacterial–host interactions. The recent introduction of the Drosophila model into the oral microbiology field is discussed, specifically the use of the model to examine Porphyromonas gingivalis–host interactions, and finally the potential uses of this powerful model system to further elucidate oral bacterial-host interactions are addressed

Spinoza on Constitutional Interpretation

This paper projects Spinoza’s discussion of the method of scriptural interpretation onto contemporary questions of Constitutional interpretation. Spinoza’s discussion lets us deliberate about the relations between the authority of texts and the authority of readers and interpreters, and the compatibility of institutional structures of interpretation which require obedience with the freedom of thought necessary for salvation and for individual self-determination. Focusing on interpretation clarifies the relation between religion and politics, a relation which allows each individual to interpret the Bible for him or herself, while politically all must defer to the ruler’s interpretation of justice

He Does the Police in Different Voices: James B. White on the Rhetoric of Criminal Law

“I want to look at a particularly important target of White\u27s polemics, the instrumental and monological language and practice of deterrence in the criminal law – deterrence of police officers by the exclusionary rule and deterrence of criminals by sanctions – and see if I can convert it into literary, self-reflective, ethical language[…]in distinguishing the poetic from the scientific as he does, White cannot distinguish two ways of avoiding being instrumental, one which could be called ethical or rhetorical, and the other which I have to name narcissistic, that is, acts and languages whose autonomous value comes from their uselessness, the aristocratic values of the gentleman who does not have to work for a living. The primary object of his attention is the distinction of the poetic from the instrumental, but he also needs to distinguish the poetic, as language and action with its own value, from poetic in an aesthetic sense, deriving its value from its uselessness. I see this is a real moral danger – the danger of desiring a certain set of deterrent consequences from retributive punishment without being willing or able to do more than hope for them. That is the reason that bringing the language of deterrence into the conversation is a practical task.

How to Develop Ideas: The Contribution Philosophy Can Make to Improve Literacy

“‘Since our students are manifestly less able to read and write than they once were, how should philosophers reform their teaching?’ I don\u27t want to question the claim that our students aren\u27t as good as they used to be – everybody knows that, although the evidence for that is fragmentary and questionable, and I do think philosophers should be more hesitant at affirming claims that everybody knows. But I do object to the assumption that declining literacy is a datum to which philosophy must respond by doing something about how philosophy is taught. I do object to the assumption that declining literacy is a pedagogical problem philosophers and others must face, rather than a philosophical problem. I suggest instead that philosophers may have something to say about how to improve literacy, that philosophy teachers have something to contribute, not only qua teachers, but qua philosophers.

Point of View, Bias, and Insight

“I think it fair to say that point of view can sometimes increase the depth of understanding, and can sometimes parochially restrict the thinker[…]Biases belong to that large class of errors that survive because they are functional (which is not to say in our interests) - not just psychologically comforting, and certainly not just the result of logical fallacies such as hasty generalization, but cognitively functional. They help us to think, even if they help us to think wrong. Bias is a difficult practical problem, of great interest for the teaching of critical thinking, because of the difficulties of distinguishing instances of prejudice from statements of authority or interest, and the lack of strong correlation of any of those with what is true and what is false. But, in case that does not make the problem difficult enough, the theoretical problems of prejudice come from fairly assessing the costs and benefits of points of view, and, worse, knowing what is to count as a cost and a benefit.[…]Then the interesting practical problem, with weighty implications for teaching critical thinking, is how to have the benefits of partial vision without its drawbacks, how to take advantage of the affirmative values of adherence to God and country without the chauvinisms and bigotries that such affiliations seem so often to engender. Clearly, those benefits cannot always be without cost - at some times, in some places, it may be impossible to be a patriot without being a chauvinist, to stand firm in one\u27s faith without being a bigot. Sometimes, though, it is possible to see a maturity of mind, to which critical thinking could make a contribution, in which those affirmative values can exist without their usual costs. One of the sources of resistance to the destruction of prejudice is an unconscious recognition of the benefits of point of view. It is far from clear that such adherence is a force that is weakened on being made conscious.

The Arts of the Practical: Variations on a Theme of Prometheus

“Joseph Schwab\u27s career can be read as a series of explorations into the consequences of the Prometheus myth for effective action today. Like Protagoras, Schwab wants to teach virtue, to teach people to deliberate better and act more effectively; his arts of the practical are a modern version of the art of justice that Zeus sent to mankind. But Schwab is aware that current practical problems cannot be solved by acting as though we were still citizens in a Greek democracy; his arts of the quasi-practical and the eclectic, and his corrective picture of what scientists do, are what he thinks Zeus could give us if he could send Hermes back to us today. Zeus\u27 original gift of the arts of the practical enabled men to deliberate and make intelligent choices in direct democracies; Schwab\u27s arts of the quasi-practical confront the political organization and distribution of responsibilities characteristic of modern societies. Zeus\u27 original gift allowed specialists from doctors to shoemakers to coordinate their activities, exchange goods, and unite for a common defense. But modern societies\u27 division of labor and today\u27s proliferation of experts cause further political problems, needing a new divine endowment which Schwab calls the arts of the eclectic: today\u27s experts, whom Schwab, like Protagoras, restricts to scientific experts, speak with competing voices. We can\u27t leave questions of ship-building to the ship-builders because we require environmental impact statements and the supplementary testimony of experts in other fields. Furthermore, political debate can no longer rest content with experts announcing the conclusions of their investigations; modern practical deliberation and judgment require understanding how scientific enquiry works.