Software Description Form

Abstract

Data for analyzing disagreement can be obtained by asking the parties concerned to make short lists of simple statements expressing their own opinions on the topic in dispute. These short lists are combined into a collective list, and the parties are asked to compare each statement in it with every other one in turn, and rate horn far the two agree or disagree. Such tables of ratings, called logical equivalence matrixes (LEMs) can be analyzed by a computer program applying principal coordinate analysis. The results measure both the total amount of disagreement and the relative amounts over the separate issues found to be involved. Repertory grids were found to be unsuitable for the purpose except within narrow limits. The technique is illustrated by analysis of a dispute concerning legalizing abortion.     

Wittgenstein on Description

Philosophical Studies -     

论道德的本真形态与派生形态

道德的本真形态是“天理”和“良心”,即普遍的、至高无上的实践法则及其在人心中的体现。道德要通过人的理论和实践体现出来,就需要实现道德的学理化和规范化,从而形成道德理论与社会规范两种道德的派生形态。     

Form Without Matter

Three different concepts of matter are identified: matter as what a thing is immediately made of, matter as stuff of a certain kind, and matter in the (dubious) sense of material 'substratum'. The doctrine of hylomorphism, which regards every individual concrete thing as being 'combination' of matter and form, is challenged. Instead it is urged that we do well to identify an individual concrete thing with its own particular 'substantial form'. The notions of form and matter, far from being correlative, are relatively independent. There is nothing absurd in the notion of form without matter . Matter provides neither a principle of individuation nor a criterion of identity for individual concrete things: their form alone provides both. Finally, a substance ontology which admits also the existence of particular qualities, or tropes, is to be preferred both to a substance ontology which denies the existence of tropes and to a pure trope ontology.     

Effacements of Form

The theme of this essay is expressed in a line from the Dao De Jing： ＂The great image has no form.＂ The essay shows how this effacement, annulment, or withdrawal of form is realized in ancient Chinese painting （Song and Ming Dynasties） and in the conception of the natural elements to which much of this painting is related. Certain resonances with this effacement of form are identified in the way that recent Continental thought focuses on an effacement of form as it was determined in ancient Greek philosophy.