It could be the most powerful tool any community might have to develop their built environment. Yet, due to political, social/cultural or economic factors, in most cities, it has been relegated to a secondary role or eliminated altogether. The ?City Architect? or ?Urban Design Director? is an underestimated area of professional expertise that can perform a missing role in the implementation of community visions, plans, and codes. The lack of proper tools and community design expertise in planning and architecture has produced a fragmented, flawed ?design? through ad hoc roles in shaping pieces of the built environment. There is a growing need for professionals with city design and urban architecture (?civic art?) expertise and education to guide community visions, plans and codes (particularly form-based codes) through their long-term implementation working with private developers, property owners, architects, elected officials, city departments, and the public on a parcel-by-parcel, building-by-building review and refinement process. This individual should be vested with the knowledge and capacity to direct the form of the city towards the future. The city architect should have the capacity to challenge and change the course of the city urban development as it evolves maintaining an environmentally sustainable and socially conscious vision. As Communities are shaped by different natural and artificial forces, the city?s evolution as an organic process has been the focus of study by many scholars and practitioners. This is a step by step method that procures the development of the city as a series of individual single steps towards a greater vision. Other professionals and urban planners have focused their efforts on developing formulas as a way to shape the city within a preconceived armature. Either way, there is a need of an individual (?Director?) that understands the political power to influence the development of communities and is empowered to enforce regulations that achieve cohesive sustainable and livable places. The city architect must understand of the aesthetic, socio/cultural and economic factors and the importance of context and contextual principles that lie intrinsically within the ?soul? of the community and are fundamental to new place making. The city architect must be capable to interpret and adjust the regulating mechanisms as required maintaining the city?s identity without necessarily imposing prescribed ideas that could alienate some groups and disconnect the community. Design professional rely less on formulas learned at school than on the improvisation learned within the professional practice. This unarticulated, largely unexamined process has been the subject of investigation of individuals interested in the study of the ?practice of the design? and is fundamental in the vital creativity of the city architect.

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Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2001.

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In my thesis, I address the question ʽWhat normative status does logic have?', to argue that logical normativity is of a weak sort, and that its constraining power is similar to that of recommendations. The thesis first discusses the notion of logical validity and logical formality, then asks whether logic is a priori and whether it can provide a priori norms for thinking. Subsequently, the issue of the bridge principles linking formal logic to informal reasoning is addressed, jointly with a brief discussion of the deontic operators included in the bridge principles. Then, the thesis addresses three criticisms of the normative role of logic with respect to rational reasoning. The first criticism is discussed in the fourth chapter; it starts from the consideration of the cognitive limitations of human agents and discusses a model of rationality that takes those limitations into account. The second criticism is analyzed in the fifth chapter; it is motivated by the empirical studies in the psychology of reasoning, and discusses human reasoning from a descriptive point of view, lending support to the model of rationality presented in the fourth chapter. The third criticism, presented in the sixth and final chapter, addresses the normative role of logic from an a priori point of view, showing how the epistemic paradoxes are crucial for determining what normative import logic has on rational reasoning. The final chapter defends the main thesis that logic has a weak import on our reasoning, which resembles a recommendation rather than an obligation.

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Theories of practical reasoning and rationality have been expounded at least as far back as the Greeks. Beginning with several historical perspectives, I attempt to answer the descriptive and normative questions of practical reasoning and rationality. I then turn to a popular modern attempt, expected utility theory. I conclude that this approach cannot be sustained because of inherent inconsistencies and its inability to generate advice for a class of problems that other decision procedures can handle. I conclude by offering support for a new model of practical reasoning, the practical argument model. I explain the three dimensions of normative assessment for this model: logical, inferential and epistemic. I then show how an expected utility decision-procedure is encompassed by the practical argument model and, therefore, subject to these three levels of assessment. I conclude by offering some directions for future research.

Theories of practical reasoning and rationality have been expounded at least as far back as the Greeks. Beginning with several historical perspectives, I attempt to answer the descriptive and normative questions of practical reasoning and rationality. I then turn to a popular modern attempt, expected utility theory. I conclude that this approach cannot be sustained because of inherent inconsistencies and its inability to generate advice for a class of problems that other decision procedures can handle. I conclude by offering support for a new model of practical reasoning, the practical argument model. I explain the three dimensions of normative assessment for this model: logical, inferential and epistemic. I then show how an expected utility decision-procedure is encompassed by the practical argument model and, therefore, subject to these three levels of assessment. I conclude by offering some directions for future research.

ABSTRACT This text is to understand, in the fissure of modernity and post-modernity, how contemporary people face the future; in particular, in the age of technoscientific rationality, how China face her binal crisis and to solve them. Until Now, in regard to the debate between modernity and post-modernity, domestic scholars usually fall into philosophic speculation, and don¡¦t touch the real condition of society. Besides, they usually follow the science of Western, and don't deal with the problems faced by China in the postmodern society, and how she can play a role in the postmodern society. This text uses a method model that I obtain from my research of the methodology of social science for more than ten years. Basically, social science research begins from question and crisis; if there are question and crisis, we will proceed to interpret and understand them; if we have a foundation of interpretation, we may proceed to reconstruct and criticize in order to maintain original paradigm, or we may proceed to deconstruct and fuse in order to achieve paradigm shift. According to this method model, this text begins with exploring Western scientific crisis and the domination of technological society; further, we analyze the rational foundation and subjectivity characteristic of this phenomenon, at the same time we want to understand humanism and the Enlightenment that influenced the rise of Western science and technology. Through this understanding, we can understand the root of crisis and possible solution. When Western technoscientific rationality faces with crisis, What Karl Popper and Jürgen Habermas do is to reconstruct and criticize, while Paul Feyerabend, Edmund Husserl, Matin Heidegger and postmodernists deconstruct and fuse. Basically, the former want to reconstruct the original normal standard and criticize the deformation of real society in order to maintain original paradigm; the latter want to deconstruct original paradigm in order to open the new possibility. The approaches of resolution about technoscientific crisis include: technical, democratic, aesthetic and post-metaphysical. The first two adopt a stand of reconstruction and critique, holding an optimistic attitude with regard to technoscientific rationality. The latter two adopt the strategy of deconstruction and fusion, holding a pessimistic attitude with regard to technoscientific rationality. The dilemma of China in the technoscientific era is ambiguity, on the one hand, we must develop technoscientific rationality in order to enter modern quickly; on the other hand, we also must use traditional religious philosophy to participate in the discourse of post-modern. This contradictory plight demands that we adopt a stand of ¡§both/ and¡¨, so we can get rid of the anxiety of ¡§either/ or¡¨. Therefore we must equally emphasize science and humanism, and in this way, we can find a foothold in the postmodern society. Key Word: science, technology, rationality, subjectivity