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Film theorists and philosophers have both contended that narrative fiction films cannot present philosophical arguments. After canvassing a range of objections to this claim, this article defends the view that films are able to present philosophical thought experiments that can function as enthymemic arguments. An interpretation of Michel Gondry‘s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is given in which the films criticism of the technology of memory erasure is just such a thought experiment, one that functions as a counter-example to utilitarianism as a theory for the justification of social practices.
Closing arguments: a conclusion Dublin Police Intelligence A LOVER IN SPITE OF HIMSELF. – A middle-aged gentleman (Mr. Ferdinand McF—y) appeared to answer the complaint of Mrs. Isabella C—s. The complainant was a little pale-faced woman, approaching to that period of life when age becomes respected. The defendant was a tall thin man; his hair seemed as dishevelled as if it were quite unacquainted with a comb; his face might accuse of his illiberality with regard to soap, and his beard darkened his chin, perfectly unmolested by a razor. A young and sentimental
Writing an essay almost always involves making an argument. An argument can be understood to be a critical line of thought that runs through your essay from start to finish. It should build upon your critical reading of a set of materials and should reflect your overall position on the question posed. An argument is not just a statement of being ‘for or against’ something. It is true that you may sometimes wish to make an argument that takes a hard line in support of, or in opposition to, a particular theory, journal article, interpretation of some data
TMM2 8/30/03 5:38 PM Page 10 2 Origins and arguments The Malleus is an idiosyncratic text, reflective of its authors’ particular experiences and preoccupations. It is, in the first place, an expression of a distinctively clerical worldview, the product of two lifetimes of academic, spiritual, and pastoral experience within the Church. But more than this, it is also the result of a peculiarly Dominican encounter between learned and folk traditions, an encounter determined in part by the demands of inquisitorial office, and in part by the requirements of
M1546 - BIRCH TXT.qxp:ANDY Q7 27/10/08 11:31 Page 40 3 Normative arguments for and against compulsory voting As a mechanism for collective decision-making, democracy assumes popular participation, yet democratic theorists are divided over how much and what forms of participation are necessary for a political system to be democratic. There is also a potential tension between the collectivist exigencies of democracy and the individualist orientation of liberal notions of rights, both of which are commonly invoked in normative discussions of institutional
7 A. L. Epstein’s enduring argument: the reasonable man and emotion A personal portrait Arnold Leonard ‘Bill’ Epstein, like his fellow pioneers in the Manchester School, was no stranger to controversy, but his abiding interest in argument and argumentation was remarkably distinctive. It led him to make enduring contributions in the anthropology of law. He had a strong sense of justice, and his friends came to know he was aroused to fight for it when his accent turned most to the Irish sound of his youth and his rearing in Belfast.1 It is fair to say, though
3 ‘Endless arguments about sex and salaries’1: the First World War, reconstruction and the Âcampaigns for equal pay, 1914–24 W hen war broke out in 1914, campaigns for equal pay had already become prominent in certain parts of the Civil Service, notably among women in the clerical grades and amongst some professional women. The APOWC had declared an equal pay policy in 1908 and carried it to sister associations throughout the Civil Service under the umbrella of the FWCS. As most female employees in the LCC before the war were typists or domestic staff and there
Chapter 10 The argument for freedom of speech and press during the ratification of the US Constitution, 1787–88 Patrick Peel I n his highly influential Emergence of a Free Press, Leonard Levy argued, ‘If the Revolution produced any radical libertarians on the meaning of freedom of speech and press, they were not present at the Constitutional Convention or the First Congress, which drafted the Bill of Rights’.1 Consequently, Levy believed that the First Amendment originally did not prohibit prosecution for the crime of seditious libel, but merely removed the
President Bush was accused by some in the popular press of lying in his arguments for taking the US to war with Iraq in 2003. But in order to make judgments about the accuracy of the president’s statements, the claims must be analyzed separately. This chapter examines several sets of statements by President Bush and his administration: first, about the implication that
This brief introduction to the special issue underscores the relative lack of attention to popular culture in academic study of the Gothic. It places the essays that follow in context, identifying common arguments and themes.