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tive utility and aesthetic considerations (for short, pragmatic issues) are in choosing which of a number of theories is preferable to cover a particular set of data.

The third moral of this tale is also illustrated by Leslie’s response to the correct observation that her rule is actually inconsistent with some of the data. It is not at all unusual, when a very powerful theory is being considered, to reject some of the data you originally accepted and which now stand in the way of the theory under consideration. Human error is a reality, and the theoretician has to consider; which is more likely, that this theory is inappropriate, or that there were a small number of omissions, errors, or miscalculations in the collection of the initial data? In this judgement the apparent weight of the theory under consideration will motivate the theoretician to find fault with some aspect(s) of the initial data collection.

We also asked the question: how can two theories be inconsistent with each other unless, if one is true, the other must be false – an answer that implies (contrary to much now received wisdom) that theories are capable of being true or false, as opposed to (on pragmatic grounds) better or worse?

The above tale about the rules will help us. The way in which the three candidate rules are mutually inconsistent is that their application leads to inconsistent results. This does not require us to say that one rule is true and the other two false, nor does it even require us to say that a rule is capable of being true or false. The inconsistency lies in the results of their application, and that is why we describe the rules as inconsistent.

So it is with theories.

2. Essentially contested concepts and persuasive definitions – a prelude to ‘paradigms’

We have noted previously the distinction between the connotation (intension) and the denotation (extension) of a word – the denotation is the set of things (in a broad sense of ‘thing’) in the world (in a broad sense of ‘world’) to which the word applies; the connotation is that in virtue of which the word applies to just those things.

But there are some words where this distinction is difficult to apply. This is because, in addition to a word’s connotation – which, for the purpose of the distinction I am about to introduce – is also called that word’s cognitive meaning, many words also have what is called an evaluative meaning. (The evaluative meaning is also often called its emotive meaning; but, be careful, sometimes this reflects the fact that the person who is making the distinction regards evaluation as purely a matter of emotion; a thesis which is controversial.) A word like ‘horse’ or ‘chair’ is low (to the point perhaps of zero) in evaluative meaning. But words like ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘authority’, ‘totalitarian’, ‘education’, ‘learning’ and ‘legitimacy’, for example are high in evaluative meaning.

A rough test of a word’s being high in evaluative meaning is whether, simply from the fact that a person describes something by that word (without adding any explicitly evaluative word, such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘fine’, ‘right’, ‘beautiful’, ‘ugly’, ‘sublime’), is sufficient to warrant the inference that the speaker or writer is praising (or condemning) that which he is describing with that word. Thus if a person describes a society as ‘a democratic society’ it is a reasonable inference that he or she is praising it. ‘Dem本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。