Assertion and Testimony

[The version of this paper published by Oxford online in 2019 was not copy-edited and has some sense-obscuring typos. I have posted a corrected (but not the final published) version on this site. The version published in print in 2020 has these corrections.] Which is more fundamental, assertion or testimony? Should we understand assertion as basic, treating testimony as what you get when you add an interpersonal addressee? Or should we understand testimony as basic, treating mere assertion -- assertion without testimony -- as what you get when you subtract that interpersonal relation? In this chapter, I’ll argue for the subtractive approach and for the more general thesis that its treatment of the interpersonal element in assertion makes understanding that interpersonal element the key to understanding how assertion expresses belief. My theory of belief-expression in assertion treats it as internalizing the transmission of belief in testimony. How we understand that internalizing move depends on how we conceptualize the interpersonal element in testimony. Since what I’ll call the Command Model does not give us the conceptual resources to make this move, we should adopt an alternative that I’ll call the Custodial Model, on which a testifier aims not to convince her addressee but to reason with him – to give him reasons to believe what she tells him grounded in her trustworthiness in thus attempting to influence him. The subtractive approach to assertion thus rests on a key distinction between the aims of reasoning and persuasion

“‘What on Earth Was I Thinking?’ How Anticipating Plan’s End Places an Intention in Time”

How must you think about time when you form an intention? Obviously, you must think about the time of action. Must you frame the action in any broader prospect or retrospect? In this essay I argue that you must: you thereby commit yourself to a specific prospect of a future retrospect – a retrospect, indeed, on that very prospect. In forming an intention you project a future from which you will not ask regretfully, referring back to your follow-through on that intention, “What on earth was I thinking?” I argue that this broader attitude expresses the self-accountability necessary for practical commitment

Ultrasonic Instrumentation Instruction in Dental Hygiene Programs in the United States

The purpose of this study is to determine the existence and extent of ultrasonic scaling instrumentation instruction in dental hygiene programs nationally. Currently, there is no research available defining a consensus of instruction for ultrasonic instrumentation in dental hygiene programs. An email survey was sent to all directors of dental hygiene programs in the United States (n=323). The response rate was 45%. No significant differences in methods or extent of instruction were found between associate and baccalaureate degree granting programs. Eighty-nine percent of programs introduce hand scaling prior to ultrasonic scaling instrumentation instruction. Students in 96% of the programs are required to administer a pre-procedural mouth rinse reducing the amount of bacteria that would potentially be released in the aerosol produced. A variety of resources and strategies are employed for teaching ultrasonic instrumentation and competency is measured in several ways. The availability of magnetostrictive ultrasonic scalers is much greater than that of piezoelectric ultrasonic scalers in the student clinics. Programs use a variety of inserts and tips and some programs require students to purchase magnetostrictive ultrasonic units. The results of this study show that ultrasonic instrumentation is an integral component of the clinical curriculum and the majority of the dental hygiene programs prescribe to similar teaching methods, use the same textbooks, teach the same adaption techniques and strokes and use typodonts, student partners and onsite patients

Exploring the Discourses and Identities of One Aspiring Literacy Specialist

Becoming an effective literacy specialist means developing tools to support students’ and teachers’ reading and writing aspirations. They are thought to be self critical and respectful of their students’ and colleagues\u27 strengths, however, this is not easy. This case study examined the discourses and identities of a highly reflective white female teacher who was completing studies to become a literacy specialist. Critical discourse analysis was used as a theory and a method to examine the focal participant’s language-in-use to learn about how she made sense of her world, including her work with students and colleagues. This analysis suggested that she was a caring wife, mother, religious person, teacher, aspiring literacy specialist, and she was aware and critical of her privilege as a middle class white woman. Despite this, she drew on deficit-oriented language about helping the “other” in ways that distanced her from students and colleagues. This analysis suggests the need for researchers to continue to develop practices to enable literacy specialists, and all educators, to disrupt their deficit discourses and offer more inclusive and effective pedagogy

Literacy Co-Teaching with Multi-level Texts in an Inclusive Middle Grade Humanities Class: A Teacher-Researcher Collaboration

This article reports on a middle school literacy intervention implemented during a yearlong teacher-researcher collaboration. The purpose of this collaboration was to combine and adjust commonly recommended pedagogical approaches to address the literacy needs of a heterogeneous group of seventh graders attending an urban school. University researchers designed and implemented the intervention with an interdisciplinary team of three teachers. The intervention drew on sociocultural theories of language and learning. It had three main features: integration of English and social studies, multi-level texts, and co-teaching of heterogeneous groups. Qualitative data included field notes from classroom observations and planning meetings, transcripts from teacher interviews, and classroom artifacts. Data were analyzed as they were collected and used in planning sessions. Additional analysis after the intervention ended focused on exploration of critical events reflecting convergence and divergence of teachers\u27 and researchers\u27 perspectives on the intervention features. Findings were organized around three representative critical events, one per intervention feature. Implications of results for future middle grade co-teaching literacy interventions were explored

Trust and Will

This paper treats two questions about the relation between trust and the will. One question, about trust, is whether you can trust ‘at will.’ Can you trust despite acknowledging that you lack evidence of the trustee’s worthiness of your trust? Another question, about the will, is whether you can exercise your will at all without trust – at least, in yourself. I treat the second question as a guide to the first, arguing that the role of trust in the will reveals how you can trust at will. The key lies in distinguishing two ways of being responsive to evidence. On the one hand, you cannot trust someone – whether another person or your own earlier self – whom you judge unworthy of your trust. On the other hand, trust does not require a positive assessment of trustworthiness. I thus take issue with Pamela Hieronymi’s analysis of trust as a “commitment-constituted attitude.” Your trust is indeed constrained by your responsiveness to evidence of untrustworthiness, but you need undertake no commitment akin to or involving a judgment that the trustee is trustworthy. We can see why trust is not a commitment-constituted attitude by seeing how trust itself plays a role in forming a commitment