Arguments That Count
Download Arguments That Count PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get Arguments That Count book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages.
Arguments that Count
In a rapidly changing world, we rely upon experts to assess the promise and risks of new technology. But how do these experts make sense of a highly uncertain future? In Arguments that Count, Rebecca Slayton offers an important new perspective. Drawing on new historical documents and interviews as well as perspectives in science and technology studies, she provides an original account of how scientists came to terms with the unprecedented threat of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). She compares how two different professional communities -- physicists and computer scientists -- constructed arguments about the risks of missile defense, and how these arguments changed over time. Slayton shows that our understanding of technological risks is shaped by disciplinary repertoires -- the codified knowledge and mathematical rules that experts use to frame new challenges. And, significantly, a new repertoire can bring long-neglected risks into clear view.In the 1950s, scientists recognized that high-speed computers would be needed to cope with the unprecedented speed of ICBMs. But the nation's elite science advisors had no way to analyze the risks of computers so used physics to assess what they could: radar and missile performance. Only decades later, after establishing computing as a science, were advisors able to analyze authoritatively the risks associated with complex software -- most notably, the risk of a catastrophic failure. As we continue to confront new threats, including that of cyber attack, Slayton offers valuable insight into how different kinds of expertise can limit or expand our capacity to address novel technological risks.
Arguments and Reason-Giving
Author: Matthew W McKeon
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2024-05-21
Arguments figure in our everyday practices of giving reasons. For example, we use arguments to advance reasons to explain why we believe or did something, to justify our beliefs or actions, to persuade others to do or to believe something, and to advance reasons to worry or to fear that something is true. This book is about our uses of arguments to advance their premises as reasons for believing their conclusions, i.e., as reasons for believing that their conclusions are true. What, exactly, is involved when you successfully use an argument to advance the premises as reasons for believing the conclusion? Philosopher Matthew W. McKeon suggests there is more involved than one might think.
Semantics for Counting and Measuring
Author: Susan Rothstein
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date: 2017-04-06
The book is an investigation of the semantics of numericals, counting and measuring, and its connection to the mass/count distinction from a theoretical and crosslinguistic perspective. It reviews some recent major linguistic results in these topics, and presents the author's new research including in-depth case studies of a number of typologically unrelated languages.