Inquiry

Genetic engineering is often looked upon with disfavour on the grounds that it involves 'tampering with nature'. Most philosophers do not take this notion seriously. However, some do. Those who do tend to understand nature in an Aristotelian sense, as the essence or form which is the final end or telos for the sake of which individual organisms live, and which also explains why they are as they are. But is this really a tenable idea? In order to secure its usage in present day ethics, I will first analyze the contexts in which it is applied today, then discuss the notion of telos as it was employed by Aristotle himself, and finally debate its merits and defend it, as far as possible, against common objections.

The growth of managed care has prompted questions about the effects of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) on consumers. This Issue Brief reports the results from a large national study of the privately insured population. No detectable difference was found between HMOs and other types of insurance in the use of three costly services--inpatient care, emergency room use and surgeries--and differences in reports of unmet need or delayed care are negligible. Differences for other measures pose a trade-off for consumers: HMOs provide more primary and preventive services and lower financial barriers to care, but they provide less specialist care and raise administrative barriers to care. In addition, patients in HMOs report less satisfaction, less trust in physicians and lower ratings of physician visits. These findings have implications for the current policy debate about managed care.

Different brain mechanisms seem to mediate wanting and liking for the same reward. This may have implications for the modular nature of mental processes, and for understanding addictions, compulsions, free will and other aspects of desire. A few wanting and liking phenomena are presented here, together with discussion of some of these implications.

Does managed care insurance require patients to travel farther to receive hospital care? This question has major implications for antitrust policy and access to care. In spite of a general presumption that the answer is "yes, " the question cannot be settled by a priori reasoning. Managed care has two effects on distance: 1) the direct effect of steering managed care consumers to particular hospitals, and 2) the indirect effect of higher managed care market share changing the market environment for consumers in general. The net effect of managed care on distance traveled could go either way. This paper measures both direct and indirect effects in a unique application of a spatial interaction model. We use individual discharge data, including payer information, from hospitals in 14 California counties over the period 1984-1993. We find that the direct effect leads to longer distances, but the indirect Igtfpect leads to shorter distances. Neither effect is large. Surprisingly, the net effect is slightly negative.

I point out some unclarities in Allison's interpretation of Kant's aesthetic theory, specifically in his account of the free play of the faculties. I argue that there is a tension between Allison's commitment to the intentionality of the pleasure involved in a judgment of beauty, and his view that the pleasure is distinct from the judgment, and I claim that the tension should be resolved by rejecting the latter view. I conclude by addressing Allison's objection that my own view fails to accommodate judgments of non-beauty or ugliness.

Radical feminists have argued that there are normative exclusions that have silenced certain voices and have rendered certain meanings unintelligible. Some Wittgensteinians (including some Wittgensteinian feminists) have argued that these radical feminists fall into a philosophical illusion by appealing to the notions of 'intelligible nonsense' and 'inexpressible meanings', an illusion that calls for philosophical therapy. In this paper I diagnose and criticize the therapeutic dilemma that results from this interpretation of Wittgenstein's contextualism. According to this dilemma, if something is meaningful, it must be expressible from the perspective of the participant in language-games; and if it is not so expressible, it is not meaningful at all. I argue that this is a false dilemma that rests on the untenable internalist notion of a unified 'participant's perspective'. I propose an alternative contextualist view that underscores the polyphony of language-games, that is, the irreducible multiplicity of perspectives always present in discursive practices (if only implicitly and in embryo). Through a discussion of the different meanings of silence, my polyphonic contextualism tries to show that our linguistic practices always exhibit an irreducible diversity and heterogeneity of points of view that cannot be subsumed under a unified perspective.

In "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" Donald Davidson attacks a picture of language which, he says, is prevalent among philosophers and linguists. Davidson"s criticism, even if correct, is not radical enough. The common irregularities of everyday language, such as malapropisms, nicknames, and slips of the tongue, not only imply that linguistic meanings are not governed by conventions that are learned in advance of occasions of interpretation, but undermine the very idea that linguistic meaning can be accounted for in terms of systematic meaning-theories. Davidson continues to hold that Tarskian truth-definitions should play a central role in philosophical accounts of language, but if the goal is to describe rather than to improve or otherwise change language, we must give up the aspiration towards theoretical systematicity altogether. In this connection, Davidson"s approach is compared with those of Quine and Wittgenstein. It is argued that Davidson"s unwillingness to give up the notion that meaning is systematic is best explained in terms of his vacillating between treating meaning-theories as mere representations of the linguistic abilities of a speaker and seeing them as playing a more substantial role in communication.

I offer a revised interpretation of Heidegger's 'ontological idealism' - his thesis that being, but not entities, depends on Dasein - as well as its relationship to Kant's transcendental idealism. I build from my earlier efforts on this topic by modifying them and defending my basic line of interpretation against criticisms advanced by Cerbone, Philipse, and Carman. In essence, my reading of Heidegger goes like this: what it means to say that 'being' depends on Dasein is that the criteria and standards that determine what it is to be, and hence whether an item (or anything at all) is, are conceptually interwoven with, and hence conceptually dependent upon, a structure that could not obtain without Dasein (namely, time). For this reason, to ask whether entities (e.g., nature) would exist, even if we (Dasein) did not, is either to ask an empirical question with an obvious negative answer (viz., According to our best current theories, does everything depend causally upon us?), or to ask a meaningless question with no answer (viz., If we suspend or discount the standards and criteria that determine whether anything is, does anything exist?). In short, Heidegger is an empirical realist, but neither a transcendental idealist nor realist.

This paper develops a modification of the notion of incommensurable worlds upon which Dreyfus and Spinosa base their robust realism. In particular, I argue that we cannot make sense of a conception of incommensurability according to which incommensurable worlds entail cognitively incompatible claims. Instead, as Dreyfus and Spinosa sometimes suggest, incommensurable worlds should be understood as being practically incompatible, meaning that the inhabitants of one world cannot, given their practices for dealing with some things, engage in practices central to the other world. Practical incompatibility grounds a defensible account of incommensurability while securing a necessary step in Dreyfus and Spinosa"s argument for robust realism. At the same time, it shows how their idea of incommensurability is immune to the sorts of objections Donald Davidson makes to the idea of a plurality of conceptual schemes, without at the same time refuting Davidson"s argument. Finally, an appreciation of the failings of cognitive accounts of incommensurability demonstrates that Dreyfus and Spinosa are not entitled to deny that all true descriptions of the universe are compatible.

Discusses BioProjects, a new technique for helping students understand the scientific method, in which students formulate a hypothesis, test it, and present the project to the class. States that through biological, quantitative investigations conducted outside of the classroom, BioProjects helps students develop investigative as well as oral and written presentation skills. (NB)

In a workshop session, the 1995-96 Virginia Community College System Administrative Leadership Seminar participants accepted a challenge to come up with a theoretical framework to reinvent the community college for the 21st century. They formed groups to address five major areas of educational change: teaching/learning, instructional/student support, curriculum, organizational structure, and technology. (VWC)

In this article, the author discusses the need for collaboration in developmental education and proposes two major ideas for consideration: (1) that educators need to re-conceptualize how they go about delivering developmental education; and (2) that they need to collaborate more fully with others in practicing it. The author notes that of almost half of entering students identified as underprepared, close to 100 percent of them are placed in sixteen-week developmental courses. Stockpiling all the students who fall below a certain cut-off score on assessment instruments in developmental courses is only one of many solutions to the problem of under-preparedness. But it is the one solution that everyone seems to use. As Parker Palmer once said, "College faculty always apply the same solution to whatever problems they confront... it's called "addacourse"." Unfortunately, a sixteen-week developmental course may not be the best solution for all students. The author offers alternatives to the traditional sixteen-week "addacourse" solution for students who need developmental education.

In this article, the author uses a comparison of various measures of success for developmental students at Patrick Henry Community College with the faculty's perceptions of these measures to break down misconceptions and stereotypes about developmental education and provide ever-needed credibility and acceptance for developmental programs. (Contains 4 tables.)

In this age of rapid technological and economic change, life-long learning is becoming a way of life. The average age of students will become greater. Participation in learning activities by learners 18 and over increased from 38 percent in 1991 to 50 percent in 1999 (U.S. Department of Education, NCES, 1999). As the population seeks more education, there will continue to be an increase in the number of adult distance students, which means that more instructors will be needed to teach them. For distance instructors, knowing how computers operate and understanding how educational technologies operate is not adequate preparation to work with adult learners. Distance instructors have to be learning constantly. Distance education instructors often find that to be effective, they must acquire a different set of skills than they use in a traditional classroom. To help make students more comfortable in distance learning environments, adult distance instructors need to be able to identify learner characteristics. In this article, the author explores the relationship between the characteristics of older adult learners and the teaching success of distance educators. Since training for distance instructors is a continuous process, the author identifies different types of effective training for them and looks at common mistakes of new distance instructors.

I draw a connection between the question, raised by Hume and Kant, of how aesthetic judgments can claim universal agreement, and the question, raised in recent discussions of nonconceptual content, of how concepts can be acquired on the basis of experience. Developing an idea suggested by Kant's linkage of aesthetic judgment with the capacity for empirical conceptualization, I propose that both questions can be resolved by appealing to the idea of “perceptual normativity”. Perceptual experience, on this proposal, involves the awareness of its own appropriateness with respect to the object perceived, where this appropriateness is more primitive than truth or veridicality. This means that a subject can take herself to be perceiving an object as she (and anyone else) ought to perceive it, without first recognizing the object as falling under a corresponding concept. I motivate the proposal through a criticism of Peacocke's account of concept‐acquisition, which, I argue, rests on a confusion between the notion of a way something is perceived, and that of a way it is perceived as being. Whereas Peacocke's account of concept‐acquisition depends on an illicit slide between these two notions, the notion of perceptual normativity allows a legitimate transition between them: if someone's perceiving something a certain way involves her taking it that she ought to perceive it that way, then she perceives the thing as being a certain way, so that the corresponding concept is available to her in perceptual experience.

Suppose you resolve now to resist an expected temptation later while knowing that once the temptation arrives your preference or evaluative assessment will shift in favor of that temptation. Are there defensible norms of rational planning agency that support sticking with your prior intention in the face of such a shift at the time of temptation and in the absence of relevant new information? This article defends the idea that it might be rational to stick with your prior intention in part because of your anticipation of regret in the further future if you were to give in to the temptation. It does this by appeal to the significance of anticipated future regret to the agent’s present standpoint, and to the role of the agent’s standpoint in her self-governance.

There are two ways that we might respond to the underdetermination of theory by data. One response, which we can call the agnostic response, is to suspend judgment: `Where scientific standards cannot guide us, we should believe nothing.' Another response, which we can call the fideist response, is to believe whatever we would like to believe: `If science cannot speak to the question, then we may believe anything without science ever contradicting us.' C.S. Peirce recognized these options and suggested evading the dilemma. It is a Logical Maxim, he suggests, that there could be no genuine underdetermination. This is no longer a viable option in the wake of developments in modern physics, so we must face the dilemma head on. The agnostic and fideist responses to underdetermination represent fundamentally different epistemic viewpoints. Nevertheless, the choice between them is not an unresolvable struggle between incommensurable worldviews. There are legitimate considerations tugging in each direction. Given the balance of these considerations, there should be a modest presumption of agnosticism. This may conflict with Peirce's Logical Maxim, but it preserves all that we can preserve of the Peircean motivation. 1. Peirce's Logical Maxim 2. The concept of underdetermination 3. Our dilemma 4. Endgame

At a sandwich shop I used to frequent in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, there was a video game - Galaga, I believe - with a sign on it saying, Must be 16 years old to play. Evidently someone felt that video playing by youngsters was getting out of hand. In truth, playing Galaga can, in the case of the skillful, consume a lot of time, and, in the case of the unskillful, a lot of time and money. It won't expand the mind, and the skills developed are unlikely to be of lasting service, except in playing video games. In favor, however, is the sheer joy of it - what else is life for? Suppose we call in a cost-benefit analyst who follows the writings of Thomas Schelling. The analyst says: There are two utility functions to account for, the ephemeral utility function enjoying the video game, and the enduring utility function which gets very little from the activity yet bears a cost in the form of forgone constructive activity. She reaches into her scientist cap and pulls out weights for each of the two utility functions, accounts for the corresponding costs and benefits, and comes up with a policy recommendation of whether to permit the activity. I submit that such a procedure overlooks something important.

Drury traces the development of community colleges in America from their earliest days through modern times, describing the social, political, religious, and economic factors that influenced their development.

Describes a teaching method that employs a variety of techniques--including psychology--to reduce math anxiety in basic skills math classes. States that when these types of efforts were made to reduce math anxiety, students received more satisfactory grades and fewer repeats and unsatisfactories. (NB)

States that a real education should give health-technology providers the skills and understanding that enable them to be autonomous in the performance of their duties. Asserts that simultaneous multiskilling, providing skills in a number of areas, and the reintroduction of traditions of "master craftsmanship" better prepare students for the workplace. (VWC)

Dreyfus presents Todes's (200121. Todes S 2001 Body and World Cambridge MA MIT Press View all references) republished Body and World as an anticipatory response to McDowell (199414. McDowell J 1994 Mind and World Cambridge MA Harvard University Press View all references) which shows how preconceptual perception can ground conceptual thought. I argue that Dreyfus is mistaken on this point: Todes's claim that perceptual experience is preconceptual presupposes an untenable account of conceptual thought. I then show that Todes nevertheless makes two important contributions to McDowell's project. First, he develops an account of perception as bodily second nature, and as a practical‐perceptual openness to the world, which constructively develops McDowell's view. Second, and more important, this account highlights the practical and perceptual dimension of linguistic competence. The result is that perception is conceptual “all the way down” only because discursive conceptualization is perceptual and practical “all the way up”. This conjunction of McDowell and Todes on the bodily dimensions of discursive practice also vindicates Davidson's and Brandom's criticisms of McDowell's version of empiricism.

Proposes creating an entrepreneurial college within the community college that will offer non-credit courses to the community and workforce. States that the courses would focus on the training needs of community industry, with the employer as the customer, rather than the student. Adds that the proposed college would also focus on community development that revolves around social, political, technological, and ecological environments. (Contains 10 references.) (NB)

Examines key factors influencing how faculty have integrated technology into classrooms at the Loudoun campus of Northern Virginia Community College. Reveals potential barriers impeding this effort. Finds significant differences between the perceptions of full- and part-time faculty in terms of developing a comfort level with technology and having input into the purchase of, distribution of, and training in technology. (VWC)

This paper focuses on one of C. S. Peirce's criticisms of G. W. F. Hegel: namely, that Hegel neglected to give sufficient weight to what Peirce calls "Secondness", in a way that put his philosophical system out of touch with reality. The nature of this criticism is explored, together with its relevant philosophical background. It is argued that while the issues Peirce raises go deep, in some respects Hegel's position is closer to his own than he may have realised, whilst in others that criticism can be resisted by the Hegelian.

Describes Learning Choices, an orientation course developed by the author and offered at Northern Virginia Community College. States that the course was designed to give students control over what they learn, how they learn it, and how the learning outcome is measured. Suggests that new teaching strategies, such as distance learning, make learner-centered learning even more pertinent. (NB)

States that today, more than ever before, at-risk learners are enrolling in community colleges. Asserts that educators can better serve these students with learning differences (LD) and attention disorders (ADHD/ADD) in the foreign-language classroom by learning to identify them, defining their language-learning difficulties, and identifying types of appropriate intervention strategies. Contains 15 references. (VWC)

Describes a study that sought to identify which remedial programs are most effective in community colleges. Reports that five college classrooms were visited at various times to observe teaching methods and class attendance. Concludes that one mode of instruction is not a panacea for all students and that colleges should offer at least two modes for developmental mathematics courses. (NB)

Describes a Northern Virginia Community College online course that was designed to assist students in learning about the structure of knowledge and the steps in the learning process. Asserts that the ability to understand, control, and direct one's own learning is essential to becoming an effective lifelong learner. Contains 16 references. (NB)

Discusses the experiences of Piedmont Virginia Community College students who have transferred into the teacher education program at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education. Makes recommendations for the improvement of such programs, such as monitoring cohort groups for the duration of the program and providing intensive advising. (AUTH/NB)

Developmental mathematics students are generally students who are at risk of dropping out of school because of various factors. Many are nontraditional students who have jobs and families; others are traditional students who lack the skills needed to succeed in the college environment. Math anxiety, fear, and intimidation often affect developmental math students, who tend to be afraid of technology, math, and college in general. The authors conducted a study on the success rates of developmental math students and examined the effects of the change from three to five credit math courses and of implementing an exit exam. There was no significant difference found in the success rates of any of the developmental courses after they were offered for five credits. This indicates that three-credit courses are just as effective as five-credit courses for developmental math students. When comparing the success rates of all three courses for all students before and after the exit exam, results showed no significant difference in success although success did increase modestly after the exit exam was in place. (Contains 8 tables.)

Philip Pettit's ethocentric account of rule-following is elaborated and defended in this paper as basically a story about the capacity to reason organized around largely implicit assumptions about what is and what is not normal. It is argued that this account can be insightfully used to elucidate the practical reasoning of agents confronted with the normative indeterminacy that seems to be characteristic of radically new situations. It is shown that practical reasoning consists to a large extent in the capacity to articulate, specify, and evaluate implicit assumptions about what is and what is not normal. One corollary of this account of practical reason is investigated in some detail: the predominant role of intrapersonal divergence of habits in reasoning about an apparent normative indeterminacy and the related, merely criteriological role of convergence with respect to determining the right rules to follow.

I argue that Agustín Rayo’s symmetric ‘just is’ statements cannot be defined in terms of notions like essence, grounding or metaphysical truth-conditions. I go on to argue that one of these latter notions, which allow us to express an asymmetric relationship between facts, is needed to do some of the work that Rayo intends ‘just is’ statements to do, such as stating reductionist claims.

I wonder which one in a series of characters Agustín Rayo really is, with an emphasis on objective correctness and semantics.

This author delineates an alternative to traditional textbook teaching of economics: using contemporary films to bring concepts and practices to life. (Contains 5 notes.)

Cameron, Eklund, Hofweber, Linnebo, Russell and Sider have written critical essays on my book, The Construction of Logical Space (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Here I offer some replies.

Intentions have recently played a starring role in theories of practical rationality. Michael Bratman’s Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999) brought to everyone’s attention the importance of plans, general intentions, etc. in the life of a rational agent and argued for various requirements governing intentions, especially future-directed intentions. At the same time, there has been a general tendency to formulate more traditional principles of practical rationality in terms of intentions. Intentions, but not actions, seem to be under the rational control of the agent.In ‘Minimalism about Intention’, I first explain and motivate a general deflationist view of intention I call ‘minimalism’ about intentions. Minimalism contrasts with more robust views of intention, and in particular views that imply the existence of intention specific rational requirements; that is, rational requirements governing intentions that are not simple consequences of rational requirements on actions. I then distinguish four different types of putative rational requirements that are incompatible with minimalism. I argue that three of these requirement are supposed to be based on what I call ‘internal’ grounds. I then argue that these grounds are incapable of justifying any kind of rational requirement that is incompatible with minimalism. Detailed examination of the fourth type of putative requirement is left for another occasion, as it is supposed to be based on an entire different kind of justification (what I call ‘external’ grounds); however, I briefly sketch some reasons to be skeptical that this kind of justification would succeed. In sum, this paper tries to show that minimalism about intention turns out to be a rather plausible and compelling view.

Some recent studies have suggested that belief in determinism tends to undermine moral motivation: subjects who are given determinist texts to read become more likely to cheat or engage in vindictive behaviour. One possible explanation is that people are natural incompatibilists, so that convincing them of determinism undermines their belief that they are morally responsible. I suggest a different explanation, and in doing so try to shed some light on the phenomenology of free will. I contend that one aspect of the phenomenology is our impression that maintaining a resolution requires effort—an impression well supported by a range of psychological data. Determinism can easily be interpreted as showing that such effort will be futile: in effect determinism is conflated with fatalism, in a way that is reminiscent of the Lazy argument used against the Stoics. If this interpretation is right, it explains how belief in determinism undermines moral motivation without needing to attribute sophisticated incompatibilist beliefs to subjects; it works by undermining subjects' self-efficacy. It also provides indirect support for the contention that this is one of the sources of the phenomenology of free will.

Suggests some effective means of identifying and preventing plagiarism in the era of high technology such as: discussing the issue in the classroom, limiting the number of choices and/or the scope of term papers, giving ample time for students to write the paper, allowing students to rewrite papers, and establishing campus honor codes. (Contains 20 references.) (VWC)

Based on an analysis of student success rates in developmental math courses and the results of a survey of math programs at other community colleges in Virginia, the math faculty at Southwest Virginia Community College increased the number of credit hours for developmental mathematics courses to allow students more time to master fundamental concepts. (VWC)

Is there a rational requirement enjoining continence over time in the intentions one has formed, such that anyone going in for a certain form of agency has standing reason to conform to such a requirement? This paper suggests that there is not. I argue that Michael Bratman’s defense of such a requirement (‘Time, Rationality, and Self-Governance’. Philosophical Issues 22 [2012]: 73–88) succeeds in showing that many agents have a reason favoring default intention continence much of the time, but does not establish that all planning agents have such a reason in every case of intending. I then defend an account on which such a reason is grounded in the need to maintain the capacity to commit oneself to a practical option. But although I think this applies more widely than Bratman’s account, it is also not a reason that any planning agent has in every case. I tentatively conclude that although we have many good reasons to stick with our intentions once we have formed them, it is not required by rationality.

In this paper I investigate whether there are genuine and irreducible pressures of diachronic rationality grounded on the structure of the subject rather than on substantive considerations, such as pragmatic ones. I argue that structural pressures of diachronic rationality have a limited scope. The most important pressure only tells against arbitrary interference with the mechanisms for the retention of attitudes over time. I then argue that in the practical case, a substantial account in terms of the agent’s temporal identity appears more promising than a purely structural one, but in the end it still leaves many questions about diachronic practical rationality underdetermined.

For various philosophical purposes it is sometimes necessary to give truth-conditions for sentences of a discourse in other terms. According to Agustín Rayo, when doing so it is sometimes legitimate to use the terms of that very discourse, so long as the terms do not occur in the truth-conditions themselves. I argue that giving truth-conditions in this ‘outscoping’ way prevents one from answering ‘discourse threat’ (for example, the threat of indeterminacy).

Steve Fuller's Social Epistemology offers a constructive program for integrating philosophy and sociology of science as normative knowledge policy, constrained by the linguistic, psychological, social, and political embodiment of knowledge. I endorse and elaborate upon Fuller's insistence that science studies should take seriously the embodiment of knowledge, but criticize his conception of knowledge policy on three grounds. Knowledge policy as Fuller conceives it seems committed to an untenable conception of a value-free or politically neutral social science. Knowledge policy studies are also self-defeating, since they provide good reasons to ignore the recommendations of the knowledge-policy expert, and to prevent the successful development of a predictively adequate policy science. Finally, knowledge-policy studies cannot adequately respond to political conflict over knowledge production and dissemination.

The recent tragedies at Virginia Tech, Louisiana Technical College, and Northern Illinois University have sparked national dialogue regarding how the higher-education community may increase safety on campus while preserving the integrity of the learning environment. Much of the dialogue has focused on institutions addressing student mental-health issues, developing emergency plans, and using technology in the event that such threats present themselves on another campus. While all of this discussion is useful in addressing major disruptions on campuses, it is important to remember that many of these major disruptions begin with minor acts or even questionable disruptive behaviors that can be prevented early by faculty and staff. In this article, the authors discuss what educators can do to address disruptive student behavior in a way that not only will preserve the learning environment at institutions but also may assist students in their growth and development. Specifically, they focus on addressing disruptive behavior inside the classroom.

The papers focuses on pragmatic arguments for various rationality constraints on a decision maker’s state of mind: on her beliefs or preferences. An argument of this kind typically targets constraint violations. It purports to show that a violator of a given constraint can be confronted with a decision problem in which she will act to her guaranteed disadvantage. Dramatically put, she can be exploited by a clever bookie who doesn’t know more than the agent herself. Examples of pragmatic arguments of this kind are synchronic Dutch Books, for the standard probability axioms, diachronic Dutch Books, for the more controversial principles of reflection and conditionalization, and Money Pumps, for the acyclicity requirement on preferences. The paper suggests that the proposed exploitation set-ups share a common feature. If the violator of a given constraint is logically and mathematically competent, and if she prefers to be better off rather than worse off, she can be exploited only if she is disunified in her decision-making, i.e. only if she makes decisions on various issues she faces separately rather than jointly. Unification in decision making is relatively unproblematic in synchronic contexts, but it may be costly and inconvenient diachronically. On this view, therefore, pragmatic arguments should be seen as delivering conditional recommendations: If you want to afford disunification, then you’d better satisfy these constraints. They identify safeguards of a disunified mind. Isaac Levi’s position on these matters is diametrically different. According to Levi, only synchronic pragmatic arguments are valid (indeed, categorically so). The diachronic ones, he argues, lack any validity at all. This line of reasoning is questioned in the paper.

sectional piano and voice ads on back cover for R.H. Macy & Co. stock 603 Johns Hopkins University, Levy Sheet Music Collection, Box 174, Item 087 By Harry Pepper. [Inside Words by E. Oxenford. Music by Milton Wellings]. Sung with great success at the BIJOU, in the Opera of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Researches the history of the Virginia Plan for Dual Enrollment, reconstructing the evolution of dual-credit courses in Virginia. Traces the rationales for these programs, attempts to determine why certain decisions were made for the program in Virginia, and explores the impacts that the plan has had on students, faculty, and educational institutions. Contains 17 references. (VWC)

Describes one professor's experience in researching the use of multimedia tools for teaching principles of economics. Provides a list of resources consulted, including universities and colleges, books, software, laserdiscs and VHS tapes, Web sites, and journal sources. Found the students generally to be receptive to the introduction of new tools in the classroom. (VWC)