Re: Political Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Digital Textbook Selection Processes

 

A 2013-01-09 13:58, Melvin Carvalho escrigué: 

> I apologize,
because of english has not been my mother tongue for a long. Henceforth,
some personal considerations that you might find of use.
> 
> On 9
January 2013 07:03, Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com [5]>
wrote:
> 
>> Web Philosophy Community Group,
>> 
>> Greetings. There are
some salient philosophical topics with regard to political rhetoric,
what is entailed from various implicit or explicit ontological
suppositions or constructions, for instance with regard to concepts like
"us" and "them". Insights into human nature can be obtained from such
analysis of rhetoric, dialogue and discourse. 
>> _Terms like "Us" and
"Them" - personal pronouns - might be considered a pro-drop terms
referring to a spatial situation, consideration, or location ( "Them" is
a distinction between the physical "Me" and the external world, "Us" is
a mental construct in which the "Me" gets included into a set). English
is a non pro-dop language, but these terms might have the same condition
in a, say, "universal language"._
>> 
>> Onto some of the philosophical
topics and discourse analytical topics of political rhetoric, we can
envision and observe occurrences in documents across the Web, where "us"
is the American people and "them" is the government. We can also
envision and observe suppositions and constructions where the public
sector buildings' parking lots are filled with the cars of our friends
and our neighbors during the hours of 9 to 5; in that supposition, the
people in America are all "us". Interestingly, the people in the public
buildings, when discussing the American people, the public, also make
use of "us" and "them" suppositions and constructions. 
>> In the
example you mention above, please consider "Us" and "Them" as terms that
apply to various assemblies of people whose scope or tasks has a
different scope. Personal pronouns refer to a verbal form. And that
verbal form ( so-called "universal" by the ancient philosophers ) give
us the sense pronouns have.
>> 
>> Rhetorical suppositions and
constructions, including but not limited to those of the variety of "us"
and "them", are often utilized to express ideas succinctly in discourse
and often "us" pertains to the speaker and an audience in public
speaking and "them" is some subset of mankind or society under
discussion. 
>> In the example you mention above , the speaker uses the
term "us" in a metaphorical sense in front of the audience ( I.e. :
He/She maybe wants to obtain approval from his/her audience ) There is
no "us" in a single element ( here, "the speaker" )
>> 
>> Political
rhetoric also often includes simplifications which predate mass media;
for instance, the government was Bill Clinton, then was George W. Bush,
and is, today, Barack Obama. Such simplifications can also be observed
in public opinion polls, including online public opinion polls, where
there are the approval ratings of the few visible representatives, or of
the entire Congress, as opposed to more detailed or granular public
opinion polls which might invite citizens to engage in civil
discourse.
>> 
>> With regard to philosophical topics of political
rhetoric, context, linguistic pragmatics, discourse analysis, and
argument reconstruction are topical. Suppositions and constructions, as
aforementioned, may pertain to semantic models, conceptual backdrops,
the contexts of utterances pertinent to meaning. In the philosophy of
science, the semantic view of theories indicates models as relating to
theories. Each concept's or theory's definition includes, beyond
semantics, logic and mathematics, its inclusion in a set of models. Each
model contains a set of interoperating concepts and theories.
Suppositions or constructions can pertain to models, abstractly,
semantic backdrops, parts of the context in which statements or
utterances are made and have meaning. Additionally, in spoken language,
there is also both prosody and intonation.
>> 
>> In addition to
philosophical, linguistic, and social science topics, formal methods in
argument reconstruction are topical. The understanding of such things,
the capability to circumnavigate topics, to have agility in terms of
suppositions and constructions, models, to be able to argue any side of
each topic, are some of the goals of the study of argumentation.
>> 
>>
Argument reconstruction is also a topic interesting to philosophy and we
could consider whether philosophical argumentation is distinct from
conversational, mathematical, scientific, legal, and political
argumentation
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentation_theory#Kinds_of_argumentation
[1]).
>> 
>> Onto the topic of digital book selection processes, there
are some salient differences between systems for book retail, systems
for libraries, and systems for the selection of textbooks in American
public schools, though technology and software can enhance and
convenience each. Topical concepts include: free market capitalism,
breadth of options, multiculturalism, nationalism, centralization and
decentralization, government accountability and transparency, roles of
the family and of the state, community, public school systems, and
numerous state and federal laws.
>> 
>> While some have considered
web-based app store models for the sale of textbooks to schoolboards,
others consider models with schoolboard-local databases and client-side
software, models where each schoolboard can have each candidate digital
textbook in their database and where each schoolboard member can make
use of computer technology during group processes. We can see that a
niche exists for such tools and equipment, collaborative software, and
that argumentation technologies can enhance such software. 
>> Last year
I was impressed by the following idea, a young enterpreneur from Sweden
gave to me: People should be able to find what you they are looking for
based on their personal interests.There is no need to create a
pre-established model or catalogue.
>> 
>> The number of digital
textbook options available for schoolboards to select from is expected
to increase and, as the dataset is a large number of books, the topic
has an additional applicability to library science and to the digital
humanities. Digital books will have numerous features beyond ink and
paper books as well and discussions about and selection processes of
digital textbooks are expected to be more complex than those about and
of previous ink and paper textbooks.
>> 
>> With regard to linking into
digital textbooks, we can envision URI formats, e.g. EPUB Canonical
Fragment Identifier (EPUBCFI) Specification
(http://idpf.org/epub/linking/cfi/epub-cfi.html [2]) or Media Fragments
URI (http://www.w3.org/TR/media-frags/ [3],
http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-media-frags-recipes-20111201/ [4]), for
referencing and linking to broader instantaneous configurations of
digital textbooks, including combinations of hypertext, multimedia, and
interactive 3D graphics. The capabilities to quote from digital
textbooks and to utilize hyperlinks with digital textbooks are important
for both collaborative studying scenarios and discussions about digital
textbooks. For documents with web components, user interface widgets,
the capability to hyperlink into or bookmark into specific
configurations of digital textbooks is topical.
>> 
>> There are
additionally the topics of indexing, searching, and retrieving digital
textbook content, hypertext, multimedia and interactive 3D graphics,
including for both students' desktop search and scholarship scenarios
and schoolboards' navigation, discussion, and selection of textbooks
from a large number of digital textbooks. 
>> Since Plato, most of the
so-called philosophers all have dedicated part of his life to education.
Wittgenstein's notes might be of use. Same as Frege's. Both scholar
teachers. :)
> 
> Would a digital textbook be considered a document? 
>
Definively not
> 
> Could you go into more detail as to how you think
media fragments could be to provide linkability?
> 
>> Kind regards,
>>

>> Adam Sobieski

> Kind Regards
 Delfí Ramírez. 
-- 

Delfi
Ramirez
http://segonquart.net
http://delfiramirez.info
Tel: + 34 616
537635 

skype:segonquart 

twitter:delfinramirez

>



Links:
------
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentation_theory#Kinds_of_argumentation
[2]
http://idpf.org/epub/linking/cfi/epub-cfi.html
[3]
http://www.w3.org/TR/media-frags/
[4]
http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-media-frags-recipes-20111201/
[5]
mailto:adamsobieski@hotmail.com