This thesis concerns our moral and epistemic responsibilities regarding our concepts. I argue that certain concepts can be morally, epistemically, or socially problematic. This is particularly concerning with regard to our concepts of social kinds, which may have both descriptive and evaluative aspects. Being ignorant of certain concepts, or possessing mistaken conceptions, can be problematic for similar reasons, and contributes to various forms of epistemic injustice. I defend an expanded view of a type of epistemic injustice known as ‘hermeneutical injustice’, (...) where widespread conceptual ignorance puts members of marginalized groups at risk of their distinctive and important experiences lacking intelligible interpretations. Together, I call the use of problematic concepts or the ignorance of appropriate concepts ‘conceptual incapacities’. I discuss the conditions under which we may be responsible for our conceptual incapacities on several major theories of responsibility, developing my own account of responsibility in the process, according to which we are responsible for something just in case it was caused by one of our reasons-responsive constitutive psychological traits. However, I argue that regardless of whether we are responsible for something, we may still be required to take responsibility for it. Whether or not we are responsible for our conceptual incapacities, we are required to reflect critically upon them in a variety of scenarios that throw our use of those concepts into question. I consider the method of conceptual engineering — the philosophical critique and revision of concepts — as one way we might take responsibility for our concepts, or at least, defer that duty to experts. But, this top-down model of conceptual revision is insufficient. Using a pragmatist model of the social epistemology of morality, I argue that conceptual inquiry is a social endeavour in which we are all required to participate, to some degree. (shrink)

James Baldwin wrote: "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." When people impute meanings to events--such as the 2020 killing of George Floyd, the shooting of Jacob Blake, and subsequent upheavals--they do so with ideas that already make sense to them. And what makes most sense to people is typically due to others with (...) whom they share identities and experiences, and from whom they’ve inherited their basic intellectual scaffolding. But making sense of an event isn’t enough. We’re driven to mobilize action by convincing ourselves that our cause is morally or politically in the right. So people build on their stable-yet-evolving intellectual scaffolding and explanatory schemes to rationalize, justify, and sanctify their conduct. The easiest part of becoming what Baldwin called a moral monster is to build up these self-justifying rationalizations. The more complicated part is to construct a justifying consciousness that insures we’ll arrive safely at foregone conclusions with little risk of confronting others’ experiences in a way that might unsettle our equilibrium or sap our vehemence. In this way, people avoid facing realities that might upend their pretenses, so they are now ideally positioned to be, in Dewey’s words, “profoundly moral even in their immoralities.". (shrink)

The following essay begins by outlining the pragmatist link between truth claims and democratic deliberations. To this end, special attention will be paid to Jeffrey Stout’s pragmatist enfranchisement of religious citizens. Stout defends a deliberative notion of democracy that fulfills stringent criteria of inclusion and security against domination. While mitigating secular exclusivity, Stout nonetheless acknowledges the new visibility of religion in populist attempts to dominate political life through mass rule and charismatic authorities. In response, I evaluate recent innovations in deliberative (...) democratic systems theory (DDST). By adding a pragmatist inflection to DDST, I aim to apprehend the complex religious interactions between partisan interest groups as well as the trust-building capacities of minipublics. (shrink)

The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years the Indian philosopher-economist Amartya Sen has developed an original normative approach to the evaluation of individual and social well-being. The foundational concern of this ‘capability approach’ is the real freedom of individuals to achieve the kind of lives they have reason to value. This freedom is analysed in terms of an individual’s ‘capability’ to achieve combinations of such intrinsically valuable ‘beings and doings’ (‘functionings’) as being sufficiently nourished and freely expressing one’s political views. In this (...) account, ‘development’ is conceived as the expansion of individuals’ capability, and thus as a concept that goes beyond the economic growth of third world countries. My thesis is a philosophical examination of Sen’s capability approach. In the first part (chapters 1-3) I present and defend my interpretation of Sen’s work. (shrink)

In this contribution I outline some ideas on what the pragmatist model of habit ontology could offer us as regards the appreciation of the constitutive role that imagery plays for social action and cognition. Accordingly, a Deweyan understanding of habit would allow for an understanding of imagery in terms of embodied cognition rather than in representational terms. I first underline the motor character of imagery, and the role its embodiment in habit plays for the anticipation of action. Secondly, I reconstruct (...) Dewey's notion of imaginative rehearsal in light of contemporary, competing models of intersubjectivity such as embodied simulation theory and the narrative practice hypothesis, and argue that the Deweyan model offers us a more encompassing framework which can be useful for reconciling these approaches. In this text I am mainly concerned with sketching a broad picture of the lines along which such a project could be developed. For this reason not all questions are given equal attention, and I shall concentrate mainly on the basic ideas, without going directly into the details of many of them. (shrink)

This paper explores two different strategies that may be useful to give substance to Deweyan democracy’s claim that in order for democratic associations to develop into communities, citizens need to learn how to conduct inquiry in a social setting. The two strategies reflect a principal division among views of public deliberation. The first strategy, the separation strategy, closely resembles Rawls’ political liberalism by advocating the development of a separate sphere of public deliberation, guided by factual and normative assumptions that we (...) need not accept anywhere outside that sphere. Comprehensive doctrines are to be held outside of public deliberation, a move which makes possible a rather straightforward application of Dewey’s theory of inquiry. The second strategy, the embeddedness strategy, stresses the fact that public deliberation is inevitably embedded in broader spheres of social life, and that the development towards community must be piecemeal, and go hand in hand with developments in social life as a whole. I argue that there are weighty reasons for doubting the feasibility of the separation strategy, and I also argue that these reasons are relevant for our evaluation of all versions of the separation strategy, including political liberalism. I conclude that one of Deweyan democracy’s most important assets, which deserves further examination, is its insight that reflection on public deliberation needs to take its embedded character into account. (shrink)

This article shows how feminism welcomed and was influenced by the pragmatism of John Dewey. While in real terms his impact on European feminism has been minimal, this was not the case in contemporary America. In this article we study both how Dewey’s ideas were received amongst American feminists, as well as certain aspects of his thinking that could be enormously useful in present-day debates between critical and postmodern feminists. We compare the Deweyan and feminist arguments against the traditional dualisms (...) that acted as philosophical support for social inequality, paying particular attention to mind–body dualism, and the consequent undervaluation of physical and emotional wellbeing. We also show that John Dewey’s proposals were, in fact, more radical than those of the feminists of the day. Indeed, democracy has to be understood as a way of life that affects every dimension of experience, and is crucial to the personal and social growth that enables the unjust social inequalities between men and women to be overcome. (shrink)

¿Cómo pensar el sorteo con eficacia? Mi propuesta es construir una teoría general del sorteo, abordándolo de forma comparativa, para averiguar cuáles son las constantes teóricas entre la gran diversidad empírica de sus usos particulares. En primer lugar, comparo el sorteo a los otros tres modos de selección: elección, nombramiento o cooptación y certificación. En segundo lugar, analizo los marcos deliberativos, es decir, “quién decide qué y cómo”. Tercero, distingo cuatro principios democráticos del sorteo: igualdad, imparcialidad, representatividad y legitimidad. Mi (...) primera hipótesis es que el sorteo amplía considerablemente la igualdad, imparcialidad y representatividad. La segunda de mis hipótesis radica en que el sorteo es el único método de selección con una forma específica de humildad-legitimidad, mientras que los tres restantes modos de selección producen una superioridad-legitimidad que declara superior al representante por encima del representado a través del proceso de selección. (shrink)

Collaborative research between UniverCity Child Care at Simon Fraser University and a philosopher in residence has yielded promising research in an understudied interdisciplinary undertaking: early childhood education, engaged philosophical inquiry, and sustainability. The goal of our work has been to better understand how Engaged Philosophical Inquiry can be used with young children on topics related to our local forest environment as part our centre's foundation curriculum on sustainability. Our guiding research questions include: What are children’s beliefs, ideas and concepts related (...) to sustainability? And, how can we contribute to children deeper understandings of sustainability by challenging our human centric thinking? (shrink)

There have been concerns in higher education circles in Taiwan regarding students’ reluctance to participate in class discussion and their lack of ability to think independently about major societal issues. A government-funded study found that the main cause is students’ fear of “losing face,” and suggests a number of practical, culturally appropriate strategies for tackling this deep-seated problem, such as making student opinions anonymous and having students present group ideas instead of individual claims.

This paper attempts to explicate and compare the ideas of John Dewey and Simone Weil on wisdom. It is a conceptual analysis which proceeds on the assumption that cultivating a love of wisdom in a student is a teacher’s highest calling. The comparison is focussed around two main questions: 1) How is wisdom connected to experience from a psychological perspective? 2) How is wisdom connected to the social dimension of experience?

The paper proposes that taking the notion of “community of inquiry” as a regulative ideal is a valuable working tool for the refinement and improvement of the practice of Philosophy for Children (P4C). Reed (1996) and Sprod (1997) have already drawn attention to this, stating that the community of inquiry is more a regulative idea than a typical occurrence. Building on these claims, we will show that taking the notion of community of inquiry as such gives new light to many (...) of the items and aspects of the description of what constitutes a community of inquiry. Consequently, it provides ways to identify important moments in the philosophical practice that consolidate the community of inquiry, and a working tool to grasp and handle some of the crucial moves that the facilitator, as well as other participants, do to install and strengthen the community in the sessions. (shrink)

The question of how the university can relate to the world is centuries old. The poles of the debate can be characterized by the plea for an increasing instrumentalization of the university as a producer and provider of useful knowledge on the one hand (cf. the knowledge factory), and the defense of the university as an autonomous space for free inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake on the other hand (cf. the ivory tower). Our current global predicament, (...) however, forces us to rethink the relation between university and world. Indeed, an easy nstrumentalization of the university for the purposes of society is no longer possible in troubled times when the future of society itself seems to be at stake. Nevertheless, urgent societal concerns do need to be addressed by the university. Hence, the disinterested position seems a highly irresponsible option. The aim of this dissertation is to reconsider the relation between the university and the world from an educational perspective by addressing the question “How to situate study in the relation between university and society?” The dissertation consists of three parts. In Part One, the existing literature on the relation between university and society will be discussed. The first chapter discerns two main approaches to this issue, namely the transcendental-philosophical approach (cf. the idea of the university) and the critical-sociological approach (cf. academic capitalism) that conceive of the university, respectively, as an idea and as an organization. By means of an excursus on the emergence of the university in the Middle Ages, the case is made for an ecological approach to the university. In the second chapter, the work of two authors who have recently adopted such an ecological approach is briefly presented. Whereas Ronald Barnett’s theory of the ecological university is situated more in the transcendental-philosophical tradition, Susan Wright’s investigations of the university in the knowledge ecology can be placed in the critical-sociological tradition. Both conceptions, however, are hinged on an institutional understanding of the university. In line with recent developments in social theory, namely the focus on practices, it is proposed to work towards an ecology of study practices. Part Two presents Isabelle Stengers’ idea of the ecology of practices. The third chapter elucidates Stengers’ work on scientific practices by first situating it within the so-called Science Wars, which provided the impetus to elaborate a theoretical framework for a civilized dialogue between scientists and the broader public. The basic tenets and concepts of her approach, such as the understanding of practice as a set of requirements and obligations, are presented, explained, and discussed. In the fourth chapter, the focus shifts from scientific practices to study practices. Assisted by Stengers’ writings on Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, this chapter aims to flesh out Whitehead’s description of the university as a ‘home of adventures’ in order to come to an educational understanding of the study practices of the university. A conceptual inquiry into how study practices activate certain worldly problems and turn them into matters of study is presented. Part Three develops the conceptual work on study practices further in relation to the activities of the Palestinian experimental university Campus in Camps. Chapter Five presents the work of Campus in Camps and explains how it relates to the theoretical discussion offered in the second part. On the basis of Stengers’ conception of practice, which discerns requirements and obligations as vital ingredients, this chapter argues that life in exile is what drives the study practices of Campus in Camps, and hence, that it is the issue of life in exile that participants are obligated to when they study. Whereas Chapter Five is focused on what is being studied in Campus in Camps, Chapter Six inquires in to the specific requirements its activities need to fulfill in order to be study practices; in other words, how the participants study. Four requirements are discerned that, taken together, seem indispensable to understand the study practices of Campus in Camps; namely, storytelling, comparing, mapmaking, and using. The concluding chapter returns to the research question and again takes up the main ideas developed in the dissertation, such as the adventure of study and the cohabitation of scientific and study practices in the university. The last two sections of the conclusion deal with two remaining issues of a more practical nature; namely, how to relate to institutionalization when working from a practice-theoretical point of view, and lastly the question of what can be done. In all, and returning to the initial problem, the dissertation asks what it means to conceive of the university as situated by and engaged with worldly questions. (shrink)

The book has two interrelated objectives. One objective is meta-theoretical and concerns the exploration of theoretical debates connected to issues of studying society and environmental problems; another objective is empirical/analytical, referring to the analysis of "green" public participation in the electricity and waste sectors in Sweden, and partly in the Netherlands as well as the UK. The metatheoretical part draws the conclusion that the ontology of critical realism, combined with a problem-subjectivist tenet, is a particularly fruitful basis for the social (...) sciences in order to provide an understanding environmental conflicts. The empirical questions refer to preconditions and obstacles to public participations in the "greening" of the domestic practices related to electricity and waste. Methodologically, the empirical part is based on a combination of statistical data and comparative case study research, conducted through semi-structured interviews with local authorities, housing organizations, energy companies, a windpower cooperative, and households. The challenges of providers are divided into making visible, making acceptable, and making doable, based on both material and socio-political characteristics of the sectors. Households, in turn, face the challenges of constructing combinations of green identity as a foundation of their motivation: ecological, environmental, economic, and social green identities. The study shows how differences in identity-combinations across cases-although materially influenced-are rarely materially determined in any irrevocable way. Instead, policy reform may substantially strengthen the social support of action-motivating combinations of green identities. (shrink)

The debate over the contribution of the Internet to democracy is farfrom settled. Some point to the empowering effects of online discussionand fund raising on recent electoral campaigns in the US to argue thatthe Internet will restore the public sphere. Others claim that the Internetis just a virtual mall, a final extension of global capitalism into everycorner of our lives. This paper argues for the democratic thesis withsome qualifications. The most important contribution of the Internetto democracy is not necessarily its (...) effects on the electoral process butrather its ability to assemble a public around technical networks thatenroll individuals scattered over wide geographical areas. Medicalpatients, video game players, musical performers, and many otherpublics have emerged on the Internet with surprising consequences. (shrink)

The present article deals with a comparative analysis between two paradigms advanced by the contemporary philosophy of education – one represented by the version of John Dewey’s and the other one inspired by work of the prominent Georgian philosopher and psychologist Dimitri Uznadze, based on a so called “set development” theory. The article discusses the reasons why an innovative idea, declared by Dewey, that school must provide equal opportunities to every student, projected and suggested by his followers, has not overstepped (...) boundaries of traditional paradigm of education. On the other hand, Uznadze’s version, suggesting a new epistemological paradigm of education, seems closer to solving the problem of reconstruction of traditional philosophy of education. Nevertheless, the problem is again still relevant and needs to be developed in future. (shrink)

Amartya Sen’s ethical theorizing helps feminists resolve the tensions between the claims of women’s particular perspectives and moral objectivity. His concept of ‘‘positional objectivity’’ highlights the epistemological significance of value judgments made from particular social positions, while holding that certain values may become widely shared. He shows how acknowledging positionality is consistent with affirming the universal value of democracy. This article builds on Sen’s work by proposing an analysis of democracy as a set of institutions that aims to intelligently utilize (...) positional information for shared ends. This epistemological analysis of democracy offers a way to understand the rationale for reserving political offices for women. From a political point of view, gendered positions are better thought of as an epistemological resource than as a ground of identity politics – that is, of parochial identification and solidarity. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the injustices perpetrated against Indigenous people in Canada within the explicit framework of democratic theory. I examine the ability of Deweyan democracy as a purported problem-solving mechanism to deal with this problem of widespread social injustice. Deweyan democracy is distinctively epistemic, and depends upon diversity and inclusion in order to function effectively as a social and political mechanism for problem-solving. I argue that the inclusion within Deweyan democracy is insufficiently theorized to provide justice-based solutions to social problems, (...) is overly instrumental, and can actually create injustice. Finally, I suggest that while contemporary Deweyans have applied Deweyan democracy in ways that do not provide sufficient solutions for social and political problems, there may yet be resources in Deweyan democratic theory to be explored, specifically with regard to reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people within a democratic society. (shrink)

This paper takes a three-pronged approach to answering the question regarding the relationship between democracy and community of inquiry and other progressive pedagogies. First, a definition of a democratic educational environment will be provided within the larger context of democracy in general. Next, I will explore a number of democratic educational environments within a community of inquiry framework. Then, community of inquiry and Dewey’s theory of democracy are examined together. This background leads to an overview of what a democratic community (...) of inquiry looks like. I end by replaying the major themes of this paper. In its perfect sense, democracy “is not a fact and never will be.” Nonetheless, without a guiding idea we would never engage in the work to eliminate the “restrictive and disturbing elements” which prevent a fuller flowering of democratic life. [Citing John Dewey in The Public and Its Problems, 1927 ]. (shrink)