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This study expanded the conceptual definition of community structural pluralism to include a consideration of community ethnic pluralism, and used that revised definition as a basis for analyzing the relationships among community characteristics and the orientations of local newspaper editors. Findings indicate that editors in more ethnically pluralistic communities are more likely to include ethnic minorities in their lists of influential persons and important news sources. Editors who include ethnic minorities in a list of important news sources are more likely to consider it important to cover stories about ethnic minorities.

AbstractIn this paper I present a pluralist view of truth of a special kind: correspondence-pluralism. Correspondence-pluralism is the view that to fulfill its function in knowledge, truth requires correspondence principles rather than mere coherence, pragmatist, or deflationist principles. But these correspondence principles do not need to be the naive principles of traditional correspondence: copy, mirror image, direct isomorphism. Furthermore, these correspondence principles may vary, in certain disciplined ways, from one field of knowledge to another. This combination of correspondence and pluralism enables us to set high standards of truth for all fields of knowledge while allowing sufficient flexibility to adjust these principles to the special conditions of different fields. In so doing, it provides us with new tools for addressing old as well as new questions about truth: Is there correspondence-truth in mathematics? In ethics? Correspondence with what? What patterns of correspondence? The paper is divided into four parts: (I) Why correspondence? What kind of correspondence? (II) Why pluralism? What kind of pluralism? (III) Applications: mathematics and ethics. (IV) Avoidance of criticisms of other types of truth-pluralism.

This paper introduces and defends an account of model-based science that I dub model pluralism. I argue that despite a growing awareness in the philosophy of science literature of the multiplicity, diversity, and richness of models and modeling practices, more radical conclusions follow from this recognition than have previously been inferred. Going against the tendency within the literature to generalize from single models, I explicate and defend the following two core theses: (i) any successful analysis of models must target sets of models, their multiplicity of functions within science, and their scientific context and history and (ii) for almost any aspect x of phenomenon y, scientists require multiple models to achieve scientific goal z.

A pragmatist thinker like Nicholas Rescher deems the idea that social harmony must be predicated in consensus to be both dangerous and misleading. An essential problem of our time is the creation of political and social institutions that enable people to live together in peaceful and productive ways, despite the presence of not eliminable disagreements about theoretical and practical issues. Such remarks, in turn, strictly recall the "practical" impossibility of settling philosophical disputes by having recourse to abstract and aprioristic principles. In the circumstances, the social model of team members cooperating for a common purpose is unrealistic. A more adequate model is, instead, that of a classical capitalism where - in a sufficiently well developed system - both competition and rivalry manage somehow to foster the benefit of the entire community (theory of the "hidden hand"). Certainly the scientific community is one of the best examples of this that we have, although even in this case we must be careful not to give too idealized a picture of scientific research. Consensus, however, in the Western tradition is an ideal worth being pursued. At this point we are faced with two basic positions. On the one side (a) "consensualists" maintain that disagreement should be averted no matter what, while, on the other, (b) "pluralists" accept disagreement because they take dissensus to be an inevitable feature of the imperfect world in which we live. A pluralistic vision, therefore, tries to make dissensus tolerable, and not to eliminate it. All theories of idealized consensus present us with serious setbacks. This is the case, for instance, with Charles S. Peirce. As is well known, Peirce takes truth to be "the limit of inquiry," i.e. either what science will discover in the (idealized) long run, or what it would discover if the human efforts were so extended. By taking this path, thus, truth is nothing but the ultimate consensus reached within the scientific community. We can be sure that, once a "final" answer to a question has been found which is thereafter maintained without change, that one is the truth we were looking for. This fascinating theory, however, has various unfortunate consequences. In our day the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has in a way revived these Peircean insights, putting forward an influential theory to the effect that consensus indeed plays a key role in human praxis, so that the primary task of philosophy is to foster it by eliminating the disagreement which we constantly have to face in the course of our daily life. In his "communicative theory of consensus," furthermore, he claims that human communication rests on an implicit commitment to a sort of "ideal speech situation" which is the normative foundation of agreement in linguistic matters. Consequently, the quest for consensus is a constitutive feature of our nature of (rational) human beings: rationality and consensus are tied together. A very strong consequence derives from Habermas' premises: were we to abandon the search for consensus we would lose rationality, too, and this makes us understand that he views the pursuit of consensus as a regulative principle (rather than as a merely practical objective). Rescher opposes both Peirce's eschatological view and Habermas' regulative and idealized one.

We inhabit a world of differences - cultural, religious, moral, philosophical. The question that preoccupies the contributors to this volume is whether the fact of difference - plurality - inevitably leads to the conclusion that there cannot be a single truth, even in moral matters. As befits a volume on pluralism, it brings together a wide variety of contributors with different backgrounds and distinctive skills and attitudes. The implications of plurality are examined with regard to religion, morality and philosophy itself, but the essays range widely to consider how we should respond at the social and political levels to the facts of plurality and the claims of the pluralist. No reader will be left in any doubt that the debate about pluralism raises questions that are fundamental not only for philosophical argumentation but for society at large.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- CONTENTS -- List of contributors -- Preface -- What is pluralism? An introduction -- PART I Epistemic pluralism and democracy -- 1 From pluralism to liberalism: the long way around -- 2 Pluralism and deliberation -- 3 Social choice or collective decision-making: what is politics all about? -- 4 Liberalism, pluralism, and a third way -- PART II Political pluralism and reasonable consensus -- 5 Sideways at the entrance of the cave: a pluralist footnote to Plato -- 6 Pluralism and the possibility of a liberal political consensus -- 7 Modus vivendi liberalism, practice dependence and political legitimacy -- 8 A pluralist model of democracy -- 9 Rawls, religion, and the clash of civilizations -- PART III Cultures, religions, and politics -- 10 The practice of liberty -- 11 Sharing a conception of justice, sharing a conception of the good: liberalism as a pluralist theory vs. pluralism as a non-liberal theory -- 12 Pluralism and solidarity: non-authoritarian reasoning and non-fundamentalist attitude -- 13 Populism, liberalism and nationalism -- Index.

A discussion of the development of Bulgarian pluralism after 10 Nov 1989, when the elite communist reformers overthrew several top communist leaders, notes that the organized dissidents & political opponents gained a voice in the new reformed communist government. Although there are majority & minority forces in Bulgarian government, authentic pluralism, which presupposes a systematically balanced society & discretely different political interests, does not exist. Pre-pluralist structures suggesting an authentic pluralism to follow are evident, but true pluralism is only a normative idea. A redistribution of the elite class that Bulgarian politics depends on points to a liberation of the dominant class. Such liberation is noted at three levels: economic, political, & ideological. 2 References. J. Sadler