45 research outputs found
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On what a distinctively political normativity is
Realists in normative political theory aim to defend the importance of “distinctively political thought” as opposed to the applied ethics they believe characterizes much contemporary political theory and causes it to misunderstand and make mistakes about its subject matter. More conventional political theorists have attempted to respond to realism, including Jonathan Leader Maynard and Alex Worsnip, who have recently criticized five supposedly realist arguments for a distinctive political normativity. However, while Leader Maynard and Worsnip's arguments are themselves less decisive than they suppose, the problem with their response may lay elsewhere. Their response supposes that more conventional political theory could, in principle, be defended at an abstract general level. This may not be possible though, given the difficulty of arriving at agreed interpretations of the concepts involved and the desiderata for a successful normative political theory. It also risks missing the point of realism, which is to use different forms of normative inquiry to explore questions which have not always been central to conventional normative political theory. Judith Shklar's excellent work on vices and the liberalism of fear nicely illustrates this problem
Oral ulcer as an exclusive sign of gastric cancer: report of a rare case
BACKGROUND: The oral cavity is a rare but occasional target for metastases, which may masquerade as various benign and inflammatory lesions, and sometimes also be asymptomatic. Oral metastatic lesions have been described in various cancers, particularly lung, breast and kidney carcinoma. CASE PRESENTATION: We here describe an uncommon case of a hard palate mucosa and gingival metastasis from gastric carcinoma that was originally diagnosed as a periodontal disease. Histopathological examination of a biopsy of the lesion revealed a signet-ring cell carcinoma, and a subsequent biopsy of an ulcerated stomach lesion showed a poorly differentiated gastric carcinoma. The patient underwent gastric resection but died of heart failure on the tenth postoperative day; a post-mortem examination revealed a residual bilateral ovarian infiltration by gastric carcinoma (Krukenberg's tumor). CONCLUSION: An occult carcinoma of the stomach may rarely metastasise to the oral cavity even as a first and exclusive manifestation; it is important to bear this possibility in mind because such conditions may mimic a benign disease
The Retroductive Cycle: The Research Process in Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis
In this chapter we suggest that an appeal to retroductive reasoning as a form of explanation distinct from induction and deduction can help frame the strategic and methodological issues of any research that takes seriously an anti-essentialist ontology rooted in poststructuralist discourse theory. Anti-essentialism captures the view that societies and social agents – indeed, history itself – do not contain essences – invariable and fixed properties of an object - that can be rationally extracted and used to characterize social phenomena. At the same time, although prominent in debates over how best to understand the production of theories and hypotheses in the natural sciences, we also argue that the concept of retroduction is relevant to a set of debates in the philosophy of social science. More precisely, it offers theoretical resources to develop a post-positivist picture of the study of social and political phenomena, thus furnishing important elements of a feasible and critical research strategy. We draw on arguments associated with a poststructuralist discourse-theoretical approach to social and political research to justify adopting the idea of a retroductive ‘cycle’. A retroductive understanding of the relationship between key elements of the social science research process offers us a useful way to think about research strategy and methodology from the point of view of post-positivism, including approaches informed by poststructuralist discourse theor