Critical thinking instructors are faced with an overwhelming number of textbooks to choose from for their courses. Many of these texts do not reflect an awareness of current scholarship in critical thinking and informal logic. I argue that instructors should only adopt textbooks that reflect a sound theoretical understanding of the topic by acknowledging the central role of critical thinking dispositions, offering a more nuanced approach to the teaching of fallacies and of inference, stressing dialectic and argument revision, focusing on (...) the analysis and evaluation of real arguments, and broadening the scope of critical thinking beyond argument analysis and evaluation. To support instructors in this regard, I critique one popular textbook now in its sixth edition that does not satisfy many of these criteria, Munson and Black (2012), and applaud one new textbook that I find does succeed on many of these fronts, Bailin and Battersby (2010). (shrink)

Building upon aspects of Isreal Scheffler's philosophy, this essay takes up the search for forms of education that will lead to increased participation in a universal conversation in the making. In particular, it looks at how the rational passions may either enhance or impede the possibility of intelligible discourse between opponents. On the impediment side, the phenomenon of 'communicative isolation' is investigated, along with the nature of arrogant perception and the problematic role played by negative rational passions. The conclusion reached (...) is one that advocates the cultivation of 'objective-subjectivity' – a practice that combines reflexivity and precise self-awareness with the conscious exercise of positive rational passions. (shrink)

A crucial challenge in terms of research methods in philosophy of education is that of combining philosophical ways of analyzing and arguing, with the dialogical and pluralist way of thinking needed in educational research. In this article I describe how I dealt with this challenge in my research project focusing on educational implications of the positions defended in the debate on constructivism and realism between Israel Scheffler and Nelson Goodman. The key to my methodological approach is an emphasis on the (...) role of a thoroughgoing process of analysis and synthesis. I see this process as the prerequisite for profound philosophical dialogue on education. (shrink)

Given the growing centrality of interdisciplinarity to scientific research, gaining a better understanding of successful interdisciplinary collaborations has become imperative. Drawing on extensive case studies of nine research networks in the social, natural, and computational sciences, we propose a construct that captures the multidimensional character of such collaborations, that of a shared cognitive–emotional–interactional platform. We demonstrate its value as an integrative lens to examine markers of and conditions for successful interdisciplinary collaborations as defined by researchers involved in these groups. We (...) show that markers and conditions embody three different dimensions: cognitive, emotional, and interactional; these dimensions are present in all networks, albeit to different degrees; the dimensions are intertwined and mutually constitutive; and they operate in conjunction with institutional conditions created by funders. We compare the SCEI platforms to available frameworks for successful interdisciplinary work. (shrink)

Evincing his not uncritical allegiance to pragmatic philosophy, Isreal Scheffler's notion of ethics and its role in education is one which attempts to dissolve inherited distinctions in the field. For Scheffler's ethics, aimed always at justifiable conduct, is conduct guided by rationality, powered by emotion, responsive the needs of it agents’ community, learned through moral education, practiced habitually, and ultimately justified by individual commitment to action. Scheffler's primary desideratum is to arrive at an ethics that is justifiable because it is (...) reasonable and so can gain our commitment. (shrink)

This paper reexamines an early article by Noam Chomsky and Israel Scheffler concerning the proper formulation and status of Quine's criterion for ontological commitment. ( What is Said to Be,' "Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society", 69, 1958-59; reprinted in Scheffler, "Inquiries".) Somewhat different formulations of the criterion are proposed and their implications explored. It is also argued that Chomsky and Scheffler's views may be seen to foreshadow and lead to some of Quine's later more radical doctrines regarding ontological commitment.