Generality

This paper uses a notion of generality common in econometrics to analyze the debate in population biology on the three-way tradeoff in model building between generality, realism and precision. Taking a cue from John Stuart Mill's views on economics, I hypothesize that the disagreement about the existence of tradeoffs in model building originates from a confusion between 'empirical generality' and 'theoretical generality'. I use these two notions to reconstruct the two different interpretations of the relation between generality and specificity found in the debate, only one of which implies a tradeoff. Existing accounts of tradeoffs in model building never use both notions of generality simultaneously. I provide the very first account which combines both notions. Surprisingly, this account turns out to be Levins' three-way tradeoff exactly. This is an exciting result because so far no scholar has succeeded in providing a rigorous account of Levins' three-way tradeoff. Moreover, current consensus is that there is no three-way tradeoff between generality, realism and precision.

Against the background of the ongoing trend in literary and cultural studies to "contextualize" objects of study in relation to other material and for a certain purpose, the paper examines the notion of context in literary studies 1.) from a disciplinary point of view and 2.) from the vantage point of the analytical topic of borderline vagueness and its (implicit) treatment in Peircean semiotics. After showing that the notion of context does not lack any sharpness of definition, and, therefore, cannot be any further clarified, it is argued that the persistent methodological shortcomings of contextualization are due to the inherent vagueness of the phenomenon of context itself. Any perceived uncertainty about correct procedures of contextualization is neither a matter of increase in precision nor of quantitative considerations, but the result of a fundamental indecisiveness rooted in the phenomenon of context. It is consequently best dealt with by an appeal to generality, understood in terms of Peircean semiotics as the further reduction of interdisciplinary and intersubjective boundaries. Borderline vagueness proper involves a lack of communication (and isolation of research), which is why the paper argues against any such psychologism and for the application of stricter procedures of semiotic generalization to any given approach to interpretation and terminological work in literary and cultural studies.

The main purpose of the article is to show that the studies under-taken by pedagogues, regarding both the experimental foundations of pedagogy and generality, have some common points and that an in-depth reflection on those issues highlights the postulate to treat pedagogical knowledge in an integral manner. The first part presents the relationship between the issue of the empirical foundations of pedagogy and the problems of integrity of pedagogical knowledge; the second part-the relationship between the concept of generality and the problems of integrity, and the concluding part presents a proposed understanding of general pedagogy as integral pedagogy in which the approach towards both empirical sources of pedagogical

Here, I will introduce a totality of a view about “the concept of an object in general” in the Critique of Pure Reason. In order to do so, I will articulate an article under the title of Generality of Kant’s transcendental logic since the article has presented the view adequately and in an uninterrupted way. Alongside with this articulation, I will purpose a consideration about this totality: As we will see, the fundamental characteristic of the totality of this view is to concentrate on determining the status of “transcendental logic sensu stricto” as (1) a necessarily “non-formal logic” that (2) still stays “universal”. Thus, transcendental logic can be proposed as a transcendental “universal ontology” which its subject matter is “the concept of an object in general”. based on this view, in order to set these two conditions, we must abstract transcendental logic from any relation to any level of “transcendental aesthetics in general” and “intuition in general”. The hint to this abstraction is the principle that “transcendental logic sensu stricto” can only be achieved at the level of “reason in general” and any reference to the level of “critique” of “reason in general” would already dysfunction the transcendental logic itself. Through a consideration, I will attempt to discuss this subject that to what extent the abovementioned view, with its omitting of the level of “critique of pure reason” from transcendental logic, stays loyal to “the idea of a transcendental logic” in Critique of Pure Reason.

There are no unicorns, but there are representations of them, hence motivating an explanation of discourse about the property 'unicorn' in terms of discourse about representations of unicorns. I show how to extend this strategy to apply to any kind or property terms. References to property instances may be explained as references to comprehensive representations of them, which represent all of the (supposed) properties of such an instance--unlike 'ordinary' representations, which are distinctive in that they represent only some limited subset of such properties, through use only of some proper subset of their own (supposed) properties. This representationalist approach results in a very economical naturalist ontology, which has no need for properties. Realist, conceptualist and nominalist approaches to the traditional 'problem of universals', concerning how or whether it is possible for more than one particular object to have the same property, or be of the same kind-or fall under the same concept, or be linguistically named or described similarly-are familiar.  But there is another possible approach to such problems, apparently previously unexplored, which has much to recommend it as an alternative explanation of various kinds of generality. This alternative approach makes use of the concept of representation, and it offers a distinctive 'representationalist' approach to issues concerning generality. But in this introductory essay on the topic I shall primarily be concerned to demonstrate the possibility and coherence of such an approach as an alternative to metaphysical realism, rather than to argue for its truth. Nevertheless, the discussion should also serve to extend and clarify the concept of representation itself, so that the conceptual structures introduced should be of some value even to realists who reject the main findings of the paper.

This essay proceeds from Sara Heinämaa’s Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference, where Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe is examined as a phenomenological piece of work. Heinämaa shows that Beauvoir is working in close connection to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and in this essay, I will show that this analysis can help us understand Beauvoir’s portraits of female experience in the second part of the book, L’expérience vécue. Departing from Beauvoir’s starting question “What is a woman?”, I will show that this portrayed experience is a phenomenological method after Merleau-Ponty, where we examine particulars to be able to approach a generality understood as “a style”. Understood in this way, Beauvoir’s work is a statement about the nature of generality in the question of sex – as well as a radical inquiry about philosophical method.

(Swedish version - English translation under progress)