This paper explores applications of concepts from argumentation theory to mathematical proofs. Note is taken of the various contexts in which proofs occur and of the various objectives they may serve. Examples of strategic maneuvering are discussed when surveying, in proofs, the four stages of argumentation distinguished by pragma-dialectics. Derailments of strategies (fallacies) are seen to encompass more than logical fallacies and to occur both in alleged proofs that are completely out of bounds and in alleged proofs that are at (...) least mathematical arguments. These considerations lead to a dialectical and rhetorical view of proofs. (shrink)

This paper applies emerging research on epistemic virtues to business ethics. Inspired by recent work on epistemic virtues in philosophy, I develop a view in which epistemic virtues contribute to the acquisition of knowledge that is instrumentally valuable in the realisation of particular ends, business ends in particular. I propose a conception of inquiry according to which epistemic actions involve investigation, belief adoption and justification, and relate this to the traditional ‘justified true belief’ analysis of knowledge. I defend the view (...) that epistemic virtues enable and/or motivate people to perform epistemic actions. An examination of the key epistemic virtues of love of knowledge, epistemic courage, temperance, justice, generosity and humility provides some initial evidence suggesting that the way epistemic virtues enable or motivate is by countering a number of biases that have been uncovered by behavioural economics, and also indicates ways in which the instrumental epistemic value view is superior to other approaches to epistemic virtue offered in the literature. (shrink)

Thayer-Bacon uses this opportunity to further explore Rancière's ideas concerning equality as described in The Ignorant Schoolmaster and their connection to democracy, as he explains in Hatred of Democracy. For Rancière, intelligence and equality are synonymous terms, just as reason and will are synonymous terms. Rancière recommends the only way to really teach a student is by viewing the student as an equal. Thayer-Bacon learned to view students as equals through her experience as a Montessori teacher, and so she brings (...) Montessori into conversation with Rancière to further explore the idea of equality between teachers and students, as well as between citizens in a democracy. There are problems with both Rancière's perspective and Montessori's that feminist theory, in the form of a relational ontology and epistemology, can help us solve by finding our way out of the paradoxes of democracy and on to trusting our students, our future democratic citizens. (shrink)

This essay concerns the question of how we make genuine epistemic progress through conceptual analysis. Our way into this issue will be through consideration of the paradox of analysis. The paradox challenges us to explain how a given statement can make a substantive contribution to our knowledge, even while it purports merely to make explicit what one’s grasp of the concept under scrutiny consists in. The paradox is often treated primarily as a semantic puzzle. However, in “Sect. 1” I argue (...) that the paradox raises a more fundamental epistemic problem, and in “Sects.1 and 2” I argue that semantic proposals—even ones designed to capture the Fregean link between meaning and epistemic significance—fail to resolve that problem. Seeing our way towards a real solution to the paradox requires more than semantics; we also need to understand how the process of analysis can yield justification for accepting a candidate conceptual analysis. I present an account of this process, and explain how it resolves the paradox, in “Sect. 3”. I conclude in “Sect. 4” by considering the implications for the present account concerning the goal of conceptual analysis, and by arguing that the apparent scarcity of short and finite illuminating analyses in philosophically interesting cases provides no grounds for pessimism concerning the possibility of philosophical progress through conceptual analysis. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann seeks to motivate his externalist, proper function theory of epistemic justification by providing three objections to the mentalism and mentalist evidentialism characteristic of nonexternalists such as Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. Bergmann argues that (i) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that justification depends on mental states; (ii) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of an epistemic input to a belief-forming process must be due to an essential feature of that input, and, (...) relatedly, that mentalist evidentialism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of doxastic response B to evidence E is an essential property of B–E; and (iii) mentalist evidentialism is “unmotivated”. I object to each argument. The argument for (i) begs the question. The argument for (ii) suffers from the fact that mentalist evidentialists are not committed to the consequences claimed for them; nevertheless, I show that there is, in the neighborhood, a substantive dispute concerning the nature of doxastic epistemic fittingness. That dispute involves what I call “Necessary Fittingness”, the view that, necessarily, exactly one (at most) doxastic attitude ( belief , or disbelief , or suspension of judgment ) toward a proposition is epistemically fitting with respect to a person’s total evidence at any time. Reflection on my super-blooper epistemic design counterexamples to Bergmann’s proper function theory reveals both the plausibility of Necessary Fittingness and a good reason to deny (iii). Mentalist evidentialism is thus vindicated against the objections. (shrink)

This dialogue, taking place between Prof. Whether and Prof. What, focuses on the nature of the relationship between ontology, conceived as the branch of philosophy concerned with the question of what entities exist, and metaphysics, conceived as the complementary part of philosophy that seeks to explain, of those entities, what they are. Most philosophers claim that it is not possible to address the first question without at the same time addressing the second, since knowing whether an entity exists requires knowing (...) what that entity is. Prof. Whether argues against this popular position and offers a detailed analysis of the idea according to which it is possible to do ontology without engaging in metaphysics. Prof. Whether and Prof. What agree that, rather than being merely possible, in some cases it is, for methodological reasons, even preferable to start with a metaphysics-free ontology, postponing any inquiry concerning the nature of the entities included in the ontological inventory to a later stage. However, Prof. What notes that it is not always possible to do ontology without metaphysics, because there are certain kinds of entities, such as universals and possible worlds, that necessarily need a prior metaphysical characterization. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the topic of skepticism is central to Hegel’s philosophical work. However, I contend that in returning to the subject of skepticism throughout his career, Hegel does not treat skepticism simply as an epistemological challenge to be overcome on the way to truth, as some commentators suggest, but as part of the very truth which it is philosophy’s task to explain. I make this case by considering three texts through which Hegel develops the connection between (...) skepticism and the ‘negative’ or ‘dialectical’ dimension of reality: “Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy” (1802), the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), and the Encyclopedia Logic (1817). In this, I also demonstrate how the topic of skepticism informs the development of Hegel’s speculative metaphysics throughout his career and, thus, present a problematic that sheds light on the important continuity between these different phases of Hegel’s project. (shrink)

Despite recent controversies surrounding the principle that knowledge entails truth (KT), this paper aims to prove that the principle is true. It offers a proof of (KT) in the following sense. It advances a deductively valid argument for (KT), whose premises are, by most lights, obviously true. Moreover, each premise is buttressed by at least two supporting arguments. And finally, all premises and supporting arguments can be rationally accepted by people who don’t already accept (KT).

Kant’s commitment to autonomy raises difficult questions about the very possibility of Kantian moral education, since appeal to external pedagogical guidance threatens to be in contradictio...

Is it true that all formative influence is unethical, and that we ought to avoid influencing children (and indeed anyone at all)? There are more or less defensible versions of this doctrine, and we shall follow some of the strands of argument that lead to this conclusion. It seems that in maintaining that all influence is immoral, one commits oneself to the idea that children have innate teleologies, that these may be frustrated, and that to frustrate a child’s innate teleology (...) would be to wrong them. First we consider a strong view of innate teleology exemplified in the writing of Plato. However, even those who favour such a view can approve of those formative influences which lead people to better realise their innate teleology. Next we consider a weaker version of the doctrine, one claiming that we ought to broaden the possibilities available to those that we influence, and never to narrow them. This seems too permissive a strategy, however. Finally Foss and Griffin’s worry about a desire for control and domination being embedded in persuasion is explored together with their proposed alternative strategy of ‘invitational rhetoric’. Ultimately, this paper argues that we often have good reason to encourage certain formative outcomes and discourage others. (shrink)

The intuition that knowledge is more valuable than true belief generates the value problem in epistemology. The aim in this paper is to focus on the intuitive notion of knowledge itself, in the context of the value problem, and to attempt to bring out just what it is that we intuitively judge to be valuable. It seems to me that the value problem brings to the fore certain commitments we have to the intuitive notion of knowledge, which, if we take (...) seriously, reveal that we actually think of knowledge as an irreducible factive mental state. (shrink)

The history of pedagogics gives the impression that pedagogics has never had an identity of its own. Throughout history it has borrowed its identity from philosophy, theology, psychology and sociology. Against the background of this historical challenge, the article proposes pedagogical practice as an alternative identity to pedagogics, although not in the classical sense of an absolute and self‐sufficient identity, and it develops one particular ontological theory of pedagogical practice viewed from a life‐world approach with the ambition of suggesting a (...) theoretical point of departure for pedagogical research. (shrink)

In thinking of my relationship to Peter McHugh as an intimate collaboration, I take some reactions elicited to a most recent unpublished writing of his on intimacy as an occasion for discussing both intimacy and collaboration as a notion in-itself and as applicable to us in particular, treating that space between the general and particular of intimacy as its zone of fundamental ambiguity. I try to being to view a story of the imaginary of community, its elemental stirrings, that Peter (...) might appreciate. In this, I reorient Arendt’s notion of communicating with the dead to the problem of the intimate collaboration and of how each might be a practice that mirrors the other, intimate collaboration being one way of confirming the vow in communicating with the dead to witness, and reciprocally, such communication being a way of practicing intimate collaboration. This leads me to bring to view a range of unstated resonances of the discussion that have applicability to our shared history. First, is intimate collaboration possible in organizations such as the university and how does it coexist among adversarial exchanges, factitious coteries, alliances, and collegial networks? Second, is communicating with the dead another way of speaking of tradition and dissemination in any context as such and what could the manner and method of orienting to this desire say about the quality of life in commemoration per se? (shrink)

Throughout history, philosophers have reflected on educational questions. Some of their ideas emerged in defense of, or opposition to, skepticism about the possibility of formal teaching and learning. These philosophers include Plato, Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Together, they comprise a tradition that establishes the impossibility of instruction and the imperative to undertake it. The value of this tradition for contemporary education is that it redirects attention away from performance assessments and learning outcomes to (...) the ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical dimensions of schooling. I argue that philosophers of education are uniquely responsible for teaching this tradition so that instruction might be undertaken in the right spirit. To this end, my essay is divided into three parts. In the first part, I explain why instructional skepticism has not been prominent in philosophy of education. I follow up, in the second part, by clarifying my choice of the term ‘instruction.’ In the third part, I sketch the instructional philosophies that ‘book-end’ this tradition: those of Plato and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

The conception of time that dominates in the educational world of today is that of measurable, invested and managed chronological time. It is the conception of time that corresponds to current priorities such as performativity, global synchronization of educational systems, raising standards and meeting the challenges of the market. The educational transformation of the self and the world, however, requires another conception of time, one that frames another kind of thought and another meaning of education. This article discusses these two (...) conceptions of time by employing the distinction between chronos and kairos. The aim is not to turn this distinction into a dichotomy; instead, the aim is to recuperate the conception of time as kairos and connect it with a desire of philosophy and with education as a lifelong effort towards transformation rather than success. In a complex relation with chronosophy as time management, kairosophy is thus introduced as a critical reflection on lived time. (shrink)

Recent accounts of the role of diagrams in mathematical reasoning take a Platonic line, according to which the proof depends on the similarity between the perceived shape of the diagram and the shape of the abstract object. This approach is unable to explain proofs which share the same diagram in spite of drawing conclusions about different figures. Saccheri’s use of the bi-rectangular isosceles quadrilateral in Euclides Vindicatus provides three such proofs. By forsaking abstract objects it is possible to give a (...) natural explanation of Saccheri’s proofs as well as standard geometric proofs and even number-theoretic proofs. (shrink)

One of the most venerable and enduring intuitions in epistemology concerns the relationship between true belief and knowledge. Famously articulated by Socrates, it holds that true belief does not suffice for knowledge. I discuss a matching intuition about ignorance according to which true belief does not suffice for the absence of ignorance. I argue that the latter intuition undercuts the New View of Ignorance and supports the Standard View of Ignorance.

Meno’s paradox raises serious challenges against most fundamental epistemological quest regarding the possibility of inquiry and discovery. In his response, Socrates proposes the theory of anamnesis and his ingenious distinction between doxa and episteme. But, he fails in his attempt to solve the paradox and some recent responses have also not succeeded in settling it, satisfactorily. We shall argue that epistemological issues approached in a Darwinian spirit offer a therapeutic resolution without rejecting the basic tenets of Plato’s epistemology. Drawing from (...) Popper’s evolutionary theory of knowledge, Darwinism is regarded as a metaphysical research program, rather than using it to collapse Plato’s metaphysics into biology. (shrink)

This paper addresses the questions raised by the evidence presented that many cardinal psycho-analytic notions bear a strong resemblance to the ideas of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In the process, the author considers not only that the 19th century Zeitgeist, given its preoccupation with the unconscious, created a fertile ground for the birth of psychoanalysis, but the influence on the Weltanschauung of Freud, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche of their common German cultural heritage, their shared admiration for Shakespeare and love of Hellenic culture, (...) and the meteoric rise of science. Although influence may not be sharply separated from confluence, the parallels between Freud's concepts and those of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are too specific to be coincidental. And yet, Freud vehemently denied ever having read these philosophers’ works until “very late in life”. It is suggested that an unconscious sense of guilt may have induced that denial.This study adopts a cross-sectional approach that juxtaposes Freud's cardinal concepts with the ideas of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Its tripartite structure has the advantage of observing similarities and differences not only between Freud and the two philosophers, but also between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The focal concepts include: the unconscious; ego, id and superego; libido; drives; repression; sublimation; dreams; catharsis; free association; primary and secondary process thinking; Oedipus complex; repetition compulsion; the pleasure principle; mourning and melancholia; a criminal from a sense of guilt; and the death instinct. (shrink)

Traditionally, the debate between epistemological internalists and externalists has centered on the value of knowledge and its justification. A value pluralist, virtue-theoretic approach to epistemology allows us to accept what I shall call the insight of externalism while still acknowledging the importance of internalists’ insistence on the value of reflection. Intellectual virtue can function as the unifying consideration in a study of a host of epistemic values, including understanding, wisdom, and what I call articulate reflection. Each of these epistemic values (...) is a good internal to inquiry. Thus, an inquiry-based conception of virtue is particularly well suited to help us account for a wide variety of epistemic goods, without reducing the value of those many goods to their contribution to the value of knowledge. Moreover, an inquiry-based conception of virtue can function as the unifying consideration in a general study of value, the scope of which is not restricted to epistemic value. (shrink)

Plato’s Apology of Socrates contains a spirited account of Socrates’ relationship with the city of Athens and its citizens. As Socrates stands on trial for corrupting the youth, surprisingly, he does not defend the substance and the methods of his teaching. Instead, he simply denies that he is a teacher. Many scholars have contended that, in having Socrates deny he is a teacher, Plato is primarily interested in distinguishing him from the sophists. In this article, I argue that, given the (...) historic educational transformation in Socrates’ and Plato’s lifetimes, Socrates’ denial is far more complex and far reaching than the Socrates-versus-the-sophists distinction indicates. Socrates suggests that Athenians have failed to recognize that there were various types among the new educators of fifth century Athens: orators, sophists, natural philosophers and, perhaps, a philosopher like Socrates. Further, the traditional education, which the Athenians believed was threatened by the new educators, was itself fractured. Ultimately, rather than offering a straightforward distinction between philosophizing and teaching, Socrates and the sophists, Plato treats the question of teaching aporectically in Apology; that is, after pointing to various alternatives for understanding the nature of teaching, Plato concludes the work without offering a clear resolution to that question. (shrink)

In his work on truth telling, avowal and juridical processes, Foucault alerts us to legal ‘apparatuses’ that demand certain ways of speaking the truth and the sorts of subjects these recursively produce. This paper explores the role of truth telling in a specific context; namely, ‘criminal’ accusation as instanced by the agora-like processes that enabled Socrates’ notorious accusation for impiety, his defence and the resultant death sentence. Through this analysis, I seek to highlight elements of truth telling required by accusatorial (...) apparatuses that prefigured criminal justice. By examining selected texts detailing Socrates’ trial, I will indicate several aspects of accusation and an exclusionary political logic to which it has long been attached. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel, Beloved, and F. W. J. Schelling’s 1813 draft of Ages of the World (Die Weltalter). It shows that Die Weltalter, contrary to much recent scholarship, which often stresses the many ways Schelling anticipated the antimetaphysical trends of post-Hegelian thought, should be first approached as a genuine attempt tobe faithful to the event of first creation and time’s “indivisible remainders”. The paper will show that Schelling’s “indivisible remainders”, the forgotten and “disremembered” (...) of history, force his thought to the limits of Romantic and idealist reflection and toward the traumatic encounters of Beloved. Morrison’s depiction of the irrepressible longing for life and recognition amid the pain and ugliness of American slavery parallels Schelling’s efforts to understand the tremendous need for life and fellowship that first urged god toward creation, when primordial longing was overcome in a child and a god entered time. (shrink)

In Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, René Girard interprets a phenomenon he dubs “metaphysical desire” in which “metaphysical” signifies objects of attraction that are not physical things but rather intangible bi-products of mimetic entanglement—such as prestige or fame or social status. These “metaphysical objects” fuel the sometimes frenzied rivalry between the actors in their grip. Desire in the mimetic theory is always subject to mediation, and Girard distinguishes two modes of mediation: external and internal. In external mediation, the model stands (...) outside the field of play of the imitator; in such cases there can be imitation but not the mutually amplified rivalry that leads to violence and scapegoating. In internal mediation, however, the model/imitators become antagonists. In Girard’s exposition, this difference between mediators provides a first litmus test of violent potential. But Girard’s dichotomy is limited to types of mediation, and another dichotomy is possible, one that distinguishes between types of metaphysical objects: those that are essentially sharable and those inherently not so. This extension of Girard’s mimetic theory can potentially cast great light on Plato’s dialogues. My essay will argue both that Plato understood the double-bind of mimetic entanglement and that his “forms” (at least in the ethical/political realm) can best be understood as metaphysical objects of the sharable kind. My points of reference will be primarily Plato’s Phaedrus and Book IX of the Republic (with pointers to Aristotle’s analysis of philia in Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics). (shrink)

In the paper I analyze two features of the genre of the pedagogical. First is a particular usage of “should” statements where one can identify an effect of erasing present normative behavior, while that which is postulated is turned into an unattainable ideal, or a value. Second, I analyze “presumptive tautologies” in the discourse of aims of education. I focus on negative dimensions of these two features and, using theoretical insights from Laclau and Rancière, I connect them to the work (...) of negativity in political ontology so that the relation between the pedagogical and the political can thus be re-articulated. (shrink)

In this paper I adopt Aquinas’ explanation of passivity and activity by means of acts remaining in the agent and acts passing over into external matter. I use it to propose a divide between immanent-type and transcendent-type acts. I then touch upon a grammatical distinction between three kinds of verbs. To argue for the activity and passivity of affectivity I refer to the group that includes acts of transcendent-type and whose verbs in both voices possess affective meaning. In the end (...) I focus on cases in which an act of affective f-ing is mirrored in its object as being affectively f-ed. (shrink)

I claim that the hermeneutic circle both describes and undermines the colonialist impulse, by mapping how our prejudices are projected out into reality but thus make themselves vulnerable to critical scrutiny. Gadamer’s attention to the way in which our prejudices should be challenged, his emphasis on the construction of the tradition that has such an influence on our understanding (and our tendency to ignore that malleability), and his resistance to the Enlightenment ideal of transcending the historical and natural given give (...) us resources by which to critique the discourse of self and other that develops within colonialism. (shrink)

In this essay, I propose that human development is the emergence of something significantly new out of a past situation that does not hold that novel achievement as a determinate potential except retrospectively. Development, in other words, might best be understood as a “realization” in the sense of a making-real of some new form of being that had no prior place in reality, that was not programmed in advance, but that once realized can have its roots traced back to determinate (...) conditions and potentials in its own past. This amounts to a rethinking of the nature of developmental potential as retrospectively determined. But it also involves a reconception of the locus of such potential: I argue that developmental potential must be understood as located in the human-organism-in-its-situation, rather than simply in the human organism. I take my bearings from phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and I make my case by elucidating three different forms of human development described by Merleau-Ponty: intellectual realizations of insight; the realization of a new perceptual-motor skill; and a child’s realization of a new lived way of making sense of the interpersonal world. (shrink)

Choo and Pittard recently have presented new attractive incommensurability arguments for remaining steadfast in religious beliefs even when disagreeing with sophisticated disputants. This article responds to the latest iteration of this genre in the work of Choo, and does double duty evaluating more generally the merits of this genre, which is becoming increasingly more popular since originally championed by Alston. Both Choo and Alston argue that it is reasonable to stay steadfast in one’s religious beliefs when there are no commensurable (...) ways of evaluating the disputant’s claims. This paper first describes four views about disagreement that inform Choo’s conclusion, one of which is the incommensurability argument similarly championed by Alston. Incommensurability arguments are attractive, but, when deployed in the most challenging disagreements, ultimately complacent. (shrink)