Michael Bonnett has long attempted to rehabilitate the concept of nature, thereby challenging us to reconsider its profound implications for diverse educational issues. Castigating both ‘postmodern’ and ‘scientistic’ accounts of nature for failing to appreciate that nature is at once transcendent and normative, Bonnett proposes his phenomenology-inspired view of nature as the ‘self-arising’, which is bound up with the notion of ‘our experience of nature’. Despite its enormous strengths, however, Bonnett’s argument might obscure the ways in which the real issue (...) involved in nature is addressed: the issue of our nature, which enables our experience of nature in the first place. In this paper, after reviewing Bonnett’s view of nature and considering his criticism of Richard Rorty’s assault on the reality of nature, I will try to show how the Aristotelian notion of second nature that John McDowell has reanimated can supplement Bonnett’s project and render plausible the idea that the naturalness of our sensibility is unique to human beings; through this approach, the issue of human nature can be located in discussions of nature at large and, connectedly, brought again within the scope of the philosophical study of education in the present-day intellectual climate that increasingly marginalises non-scientific, intellectual endeavours. I will also briefly reflect on the relevance of the notion of second nature to Stephen Boulter’s recently proposed idea of ‘education from a biological point of view’. (shrink)

The central thesis of this article is that the notion of second nature that John McDowell has reanimated has something of ethical and educational importance, thereby possibly extending the borders of the philosophy of education. The argument to this conclusion is the subject of serious consideration and criticism. The aim of this article is therefore to clarify the educational implications of the conception of second nature by responding to the three likely objections: (1) the charge of idealism, (2) the charge (...) of anthropocentrism, and (3) the charge of triviality. Through critical discussions of these criticisms, it is made explicit that second nature, from the outset, illuminates every sphere of the lives of human beings. A lively appreciation of this leads to the conclusion that the issue of how we develop our world of meaning with the conception of second nature should come under the scope of serious philosophical discourse on education. (shrink)

It is often argued that neuroscience can be expected to provide insights of significance for education. Advocates of this view are sometimes committed to ‘brainism’, the view (a) that an individual’s mental life is constituted by states, events and processes in her brain, and (b) that psychological attributes may legitimately be ascribed to the brain. This paper considers the case for rejecting brainism in favour of ‘personalism’, the view that psychological attributes are appropriately ascribed only to persons and that mental (...) phenomena do not occur ‘inside’ the person but are aspects of her mode of engagement with the world. The paper explores arguments for personalism from Russian philosopher Evald Ilyenkov and a number of contemporary Western thinkers, including Peter Hacker and John McDowell. It is argued that, since plausible forms of personalism do not deny that brain functioning is a causal precondition of our mental lives, personalism is consistent with the claim that neuroscience is relevant to education, and not just to the explanation of learning disorders. Nevertheless, it is important that fascination with scientific innovation and technological possibility should not distort our conception of what education is or ought to be, leading us to portray education not as a communicative endeavour, but as an exercise in engineering. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the human dimension of technology-enhanced learning; many suppositions are made about this but the amount of attention it has been given relative to that paid to technology is quite limited. It is argued that an aspect of the question that deserves more attention than it has received in the work on the application of technologies to education is epistemology on the grounds that the nature of knowledge and the general character of mind are critically important. (...) As regards epistemology this paper draws on recent developments in philosophy by John McDowell and Robert Brandom that deal with the relation of mind to world and the nature of experience. From McDowell it draws on the idea of second nature and particularly the argument that human beings acquire their cognitive capacities by initiation into language and tradition. From Brandom it draws on the idea that humans stand apart from animals and machines in that they respond to reasons as well as to causes. It is argued that the implication of these ideas for education differ radically from the pedagogic models that underpin much work on technology-enhanced learning where the suppositions about experience are quite different. Indeed the nature of knowledge is usually presumed rather than examined and often what is taken for granted is awareness as a conceptually unmediated response to the world. These questions are raised in the context of so far disappointing results of the use of technologies to enhance learning. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the human dimension of technology-enhanced learning; many suppositions are made about this but the amount of attention it has been given relative to that paid to technology is quite limited. It is argued that an aspect of the question that deserves more attention than it has received in the work on the application of technologies to education is epistemology on the grounds that the nature of knowledge and the general character of mind are critically important. (...) As regards epistemology this paper draws on recent developments in philosophy by John McDowell and Robert Brandom that deal with the relation of mind to world and the nature of experience. From McDowell it draws on the idea of second nature and particularly the argument that human beings acquire their cognitive capacities by initiation into language and tradition. From Brandom it draws on the idea that humans stand apart from animals and machines in that they respond to reasons as well as to causes. It is argued that the implication of these ideas for education differ radically from the pedagogic models that underpin much work on technology-enhanced learning where the suppositions about experience are quite different. Indeed the nature of knowledge is usually presumed rather than examined and often what is taken for granted is awareness as a conceptually unmediated response to the world. These questions are raised in the context of so far disappointing results of the use of technologies to enhance learning. (shrink)

It is often argued that neuroscience can be expected to provide insights of significance for education. Advocates of this view are sometimes committed to 'brainism', the view (a) that an individual's mental life is constituted by states, events and processes in her brain, and (b) that psychological attributes may legitimately be ascribed to the brain. This paper considers the case for rejecting brainism in favour of 'personalism', the view that psychological attributes are appropriately ascribed only to persons and that mental (...) phenomena do not occur 'inside' the person but are aspects of her mode of engagement with the world. The paper explores arguments for personalism from Russian philosopher Evald Ilyenkov and a number of contemporary Western thinkers, including Peter Hacker and John McDowell. It is argued that, since plausible forms of personalism do not deny that brain functioning is a causal precondition of our mental lives, personalism is consistent with the claim that neuroscience is relevant to education, and not just to the explanation of learning disorders. Nevertheless, it is important that fascination with scientific innovation and technological possibility should not distort our conception of what education is or ought to be, leading us to portray education not as a communicative endeavour, but as an exercise in engineering. (shrink)

This paper examines Hegel’s place in the philosophy of Eval’d Il’enkov (1924–1979). Hegel’s ideas had a huge impact on Il’enkov’s conception of the nature of philosophy and of the philosopher’s mission, and they formed the core of his distinctive account of thought and its place in nature. At the same time, Il’enkov was victimized for his “Hegelianism” throughout his career, from the time he was sacked from Moscow State University in 1955 to the ideological criticisms that preceded his death in (...) 1979. After considering Hegel’s influence on the history of Russian thought, the paper focuses on Hegelian themes in Il’enkov’s 1974 book, Dialektičeskaja logika and evaluates their philosophical significance. Finally, parallels are explored between Il’enkov’s situation at the end of his life and the plight of Nikolaj Bukharin, incarcerated in the Lubjanka prison in 1936 and at work on Philosophical arabesques. Both thinkers confronted the contradiction between their confidence in the rationality of history and the tragic absurdity of Soviet reality, and both responded by affirming their fidelity to Lenin and his vision of Marxism. In this way, they sought to make sense of their respective situations in the face of extreme adversity. That they so much as thought it worth trying owed much to Hegel’s influence. (shrink)