Core curriculum, general education and other nostrums

What should American educators aim at accomplishing in the closing years of the twentieth century? Everybody agrees that major changes are desirable, but the proposal that is most widely discussed and that is being pushed by Bloom, Bennett and other secular theologians of a right-wing persuasion -- to resusitate "general education," alternatively "core curriculum," alternatively again "the liberal arts" -- would make matters worse, not better. It would be seriously dysfunctional in our proletaritized, polyglot society

Does moral philosophy rest on a mistake?

I have expropriated the title of Prichard's 1912 paperl because, I too answer his question affinnatively. But the mistake I detect is not the one Prichard thought he had uncovered, and his article is a classic example of the mistake I propose to discuss. It is to believe, as some moral philosophers still appear to do, that moral philosophy has a special domain or special method that distinguishes it in some important way from sociology, anthropology, psychology and economics. I shall argue that these moral philosophers are misled by the "philosophical" vocabulary they use

Roles, role modulations and differential moral assessment of role performance

This paper is a further development of the second section of Social Science Working Paper Number 410. I argue here that disagreements over how well or how ill someone has performed in some social role are affected by a widespread tendency to confuse public and private roles. Those who assess performance in a given role by the standards appropriate for private roles will never agree with those who assess the same performance by the standards appropriate for public roles. I illustrate this thesis by examining differing evaluations of a number of typical policy decisions. While I do not expect that this discussion will terminate all such disagreements, I hope it may help disputants to understand what it is they are disagreeing about

Paintings and their implicit presuppositions : a preliminary report

In a series of earlier papers (Social Science Working Papers 350, 355. 357) we have studied the ways in which differences in "implicit presupposi tions" (i. e •• differences in world views) cause scientists and historians to reach differing conclusions from a consideration of the same evidence. In this paper we show that paintings are characterized by implicit presuppositions similar to those that characterize the written materials -- essays, letters, scientific papers -- we have already studied

Paintings and their implicit presuppositions: High Renaissance and Mannerism

All art historians who are interested in questions of "styles" or "schools" agree in identifying a High Renaissance school of Italian painting. There is, however, a disagreement, which has seemed nonterminating, regarding Mannerism: Is it another distinct school or is it merely a late development of the Renaissance school? We believe that this disagreement can be terminated by distinguishing questions of fact about paintings from questions about the definitions of schools. To this end we have had two representative subsets of paintings--one earlier, one later--rated on four of the dimensions of implicit presuppositions that we have introduced in other Working Papers. When the paintings are scaled in this way a very distinct profile emerges for the earlier, or Renaissance, paintings. In contrast, the later, or Mannerist, paintings are so heterogeneous that we conclude that they are best described as deviations from the Renaissance profile, rather than a separate school. These results are not unimportant--at least for art historians. But they are more important methodologically inasmuch as the procedures applied here can be used in classifying and distinguishing from one another all kind of cultural products

ACSB: A minimum performance assessment

Amplitude companded sideband (ACSB) is a new modulation technique which uses a much smaller channel width than does conventional frequency modulation (FM). Among the requirements of a mobile communications system is adequate speech intelligibility. This paper explores this aspect of minimum required performance. First, the basic principles of ACSB are described, with emphasis on those features that affect speech quality. Second, the appropriate performance measures for ACSB are reviewed. Third, a subjective voice quality scoring method is used to determine the values of the performance measures that equate to the minimum level of intelligibility. It is assumed that the intelligibility of an FM system operating at 12 dB SINAD represents that minimum. It was determined that ACSB operating at 12 dB SINAD with an audio-to-pilot ratio of 10 dB provides approximately the same intelligibility as FM operating at 12 dB SINAD

Across Centuries and Continents on the Track of "Correctness"

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Public Roles, Private Roles, and the Question of South African Investments

Should the trustees of educational institutions sell their investments in companies doing business in South Africa? Discussions of this question have tended to generate more heat than light, partly because role expectations for trustees are not well defined but also because the differences between public and private roles are not well understood. In both of these respects, the question of South African investments is typical of many of the moral problems that arise in periods of rapid social change. An analysis of some of the concepts underlying this disagreement should therefore have a wider relevance. Accordingly, in the first three sections of this paper the kinds of situations which are likely to be morally problematic are redefined in terms of conflicts over role expectations, especially conflicts between expectations for private and for public roles. In the last section of the paper the distinctions introduced in the first three sections are applied to the question of South African investments. Though it is not to be expected that this analysis will dissolve the disagreement over divestment, disputants may at least learn what it is that they are disputing about