opinion (32) and
unargued in the original merits briefs.
In what follows, I will suggest that Waldron's Third Absolutist Claim suffers three defects: it is substantially
unargued, unduly agency-denying, and normatively suspect.
Like many other recent reports on the topic, this one starts from
unargued -- and largely unwarranted -- assumptions and arrives at anodyne conclusions.
"We were thus deprived of the opportunity to consider, and settle, a controverted question of law that has divided the Circuits, and were invited instead to decide an ADA question that has relevance only if we assume the Ninth Circuit correctly resolved the antecedent,
unargued question on which we granted certiorari." Sheehan, 135 S.Ct.1765 at 1779 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
It is a modern conceit that pre-modern European governments rested on an
unargued right to rule alleged to come from God or the mere fact of conquest, without reference to popular will.
Nicholls writes, "Conceptual breakthrough can best be understood in terms of 'paradigms' [...]" where "paradigm" designates a "way of looking at and interpreting the world" and "consists of a set of often unspoken and
unargued assumptions" (Clute and Nicholls 255).
I believe that there is at least one good reason why the above should not be thought of as an
unargued presupposition.
Cynicism can be ad hoc,
unargued, unsubstantiated, ungenerous, anti-social, and lacking in the kind of self-reflection that undergirds philosophical irony.
are
unargued, ungrounded in a narrative of reception that might give them explanatory force" (Doom, p.
The normative conclusion is in fact an
unargued premise.
It is easy to spot
unargued assumptions in this passage from the Harvard report, and several of its claims could reasonably be disputed.
The
unargued claim that manipulated wants are themselves imposed costs seems false.