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

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

What Do Symmetries Tell Us About Structure?

Mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers of physics often look to the symmetries of an object for insight into the structure and constitution of the object. My aim in this paper is to explain why this practice is successful. In order to do so, I present a collection of results that are closely related to (and in a sense, generalizations of) Beth’s and Svenonius’ theorems

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

On the Structure of Classical Mechanics

Jill North (North, 2009) has recently argued that Hamiltonian mechanics ascribes less structure to the world than Lagrangian mechanics does. I will argue that North's argument is not sound. In doing so, I will present some obstacles that must be navigated by anyone interested in comparing the amounts of structure that different physical theories ascribe to the world

Native advertising : attitudes, value and purchase intention

textNative-form advertising in the digital space can most easily be defined as promotional content constructed to mimic the form and structure of the website that it is embedded on. With the rise of user generated content and social media, digital native advertising is fast becoming a popular promotional tactic for brands looking to engage with an online audience. This study examines whether this form of advertising significantly impacts consumer attitudes towards the ad, value of the ad and purchase intention of the promoted product across three product categories. Although not significant, results suggest that native advertising positively impacts entertainment- and lifestyle-based products, while information-based service industries, including cyber security, saw a negative reaction from respondents. That said, product category did influence attitude toward the ad and ad value regardless of the ad type. Moreover, a strong positive correlation between product involvement and purchase intention was found, indicating the need to target specific audiences with online native advertising.Advertisin