Este trabajo investiga las capacidades epistémicas de las instituciones democráticas a través de una evaluación de tres modelos epistémicos de democracia: el Teorema del Jurado de Condorcet, el Teorema ‘Diversidad supera Habilidad’ y el modelo experimentalista de Dewey. El modelo de Dewey es superior a los demás en su capacidad de modelar las funciones epistémicas de tres características constitutivas de la democracia: la diversidad epistémica de los participantes, la interacción de la votación con el debate y los mecanismos de retroalimentación (...) como las elecciones periódicas y las protestas. Considera que la democracia es una institución para reunir información ampliamente distribuida sobre problemas y políticas de interés público mediante la participación de conocedores epistémicamente diversos. Las normas democráticas de libre discurso, disenso, retroalimentación y rendición de cuentas funcionan para garantizar el aprendizaje colectivo y con base experimental a partir de las diversas experiencias de los diferentes conocedores. Ilustro estos puntos con un estudio de caso de grupos forestales comunitarios en el Asia meridional, cuyas capacidades epistémicas se han visto perjudicadas por la supresión de la participación de las mujeres. (shrink)

In this essay both the facts/values and facticity/normativity divides are considered from the perspective of global semiotics and with specific regard to the relationships between legal meaning and spatial scope of law’s experience. Through an examination of the inner and genetic projective significance of categorization, I will analyze the semantic dynamics of the descriptive parts comprising legal sentences in order to show the intermingling of factual and axiological/teleological categorizations in the unfolding of legal experience. Subsequently, I will emphasize the translational (...) and enactive cognitive disposition underlying the construction of the second premise of the so-called judiciary syllogism and thereby the untenability of the idea that ‘law makes its facts.’ Hence, I will try to bring to the fore the cultural pre-assumptions encapsulated in the positivistic and therefore also formalistic or analytical approaches to legal experience and the loss of their inner consistency when legal experience confronts the phases and major changes of global semiotics. Finally, I will strive to relativize the opposition between the positivist and non-positivistic theories of law in view of an understanding of legal experience focused not only, or at least not primarily, on what ‘law is’ but also on ‘how’ it unwinds through, and _in spite of_, environmental and semantic transformations. (shrink)

The emotional state of war-affected populations has become a central concern for international policy-makers in the last decade. Growing interest in war trauma is influenced by contemporary Anglo-American emotionology, or emotional norms, which tends to pathologize ordinary responses to distress, including anger related to survival strategies. The article critically analyses the ascendancy of a therapeutic security paradigm in international politics, which seeks to explain the prevailing political, economic and social conditions in terms of cycles of emotional dysfunctionalism. The article contends (...) that international therapeutic governance pathologizes waraffected populations as emotionally dysfunctional and problematizes their right to self-government, leading to extensive external intervention. However, international therapeutic governance may be detrimental to postwar recovery as well legitimizing a denial of self-government. (shrink)

The methodological foundations of any scientific discipline are shaped by the goals towards which that discipline is aiming. While it is almost universally accepted that the goals of explanation and prediction of natural and non-human phenomena have been met with great success since the scientific revolution, it is almost just as universally accepted that the social sciences have not even come close to achieving these goals. This raises the question addressed in this paper, namely, what is economics, and social science (...) more broadly speaking, for? What is their aim, and how is it similar and dissimilar to that of the natural sciences as we have come to classify them? I take up this question from a pragmatic perspective in this paper, setting economics within the wider context of social inquiry. Specifically, I turn to Hilary Putnam and John Dewey as exemplars of the pragmatic critique of any economics that sees its goals in line with those of the natural sciences, that is, as aiming for explanation and prediction according to governing laws of human behaviour. NB: this is a preprint that underwent some minor edits. (shrink)

Post-truth has become a commonplace strategy. No longer are objective facts viewed as having evidentiary value; scientific knowledge is on a par with emotions or personal beliefs. We intend to show that in the context of post-truth, those proffering and receiving an assertion do not care about the truth-value of the assertion or about the best way to gather evidence concerning it. Such attitudes raise several questions about how relativism can be a corrupting influence in contemporary democracies. We will analyse (...) Steve Fuller’s use of the term «post-truth» – especially, the political connotations about epistemic democracy that he highlights. Instead, we offer a pragmatist defence of the truth and an alternative meaning of epistemic democracy. (shrink)

John Dewey adopted a child-centered point of view to illuminate aspects of education he believed teacher-centered educators were neglecting, but he did so self-consciously and self-critically, because he also believed that ‘a new order of conceptions leading to new modes of practice’ was needed. Dewey introduced his new conceptions in The Child and the Curriculum and later and more fully in Democracy and Education. Teachers at his Laboratory School in Chicago developed the new modes of practice. In this article, I (...) explore Dewey’s new conception of education and compare it with the apparently opposed views of R. S. Peters and Paulo Freire. In doing so, I show that, despite their criticisms of Dewey, whether explicit or implicit, these influential philosophers, representing quite different traditions in philosophy of education were in substantial agreement with him. I also show that, despite our own differences, as important as they are, seeing teachers and learners at work in a rapidly changing society, now on a global scale, in classrooms which are also changing, driven largely by new technologies, the conception of education Dewey, Peters, and Freire developed can provide us with the foundation we need to understand the changing teacher–learner relationship and the purposes their shared activities serve. (shrink)

This paper provides a fresh examination of John Dewey’s social philosophy in the light of new evidence made available by the recent discovery of the original manuscript Dewey wrote in preparation of the Lectures on Social and Political Philosophy delivered in China and published here for the first time. The paper reconstructs Dewey’s ambivalent relationship with social philosophy throughout his long career and focuses upon his attempt between 1919 and 1923 to develop his own’s social philosophy. It proceeds to examine (...) the contribution of the Chinese Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy to Dewey’s project in social philosophy and shows that our understanding of Dewey’s social philosophy was severely hampered by the unavailability of the original text. It concludes by assessing the critical potential of Dewey’s social philosophy. (shrink)

Evolutionary economics often focuses on the comparison between economic competition and the process of natural selection to select the fitter members of a given population. But that neglects the other "half" of an evolutionary process, the mechanism for the generation of new possibilities that is key to dynamic efficiency. My topic is the process of parallel experimentation which I take to be a process of multiple experiments running concurrently with some form of common goal, with some semi-isolation between the experiments, (...) with benchmarking comparisons made between the experiments, and with the "migration" of discoveries between experiments wherever possible to ratchet up the performance of the group. The thesis is that parallel experimentation is a fundamental dynamic efficiency scheme to enhance and accelerate variation, innovation, and learning in contexts of genuine uncertainty or known ignorance. Within evolutionary biology, this type of parallel experimentation scheme was developed in Sewall Wright's shifting balance theory of evolution. It addressed the rather neglected topic of how a population on a low fitness peak might eventually be able to go "downhill" against selective pressures, traverse a valley of low fitness, and then ascend a higher fitness peak. The theme of parallel experimentation is used to recast and pull together dynamic and pluralistic theories in economics, political theory, philosophy of science, and social learning. (shrink)

This article investigates the place that habit occupies in different ‘architectures of the person’, focusing particularly on constructions of the relations between habit and other components of personhood that are marked by time. Three such positions are examined: first, the relations between thought, will, memory, habit and instinct proposed by post-Darwinian accounts of ‘organic memory’; second, Henri Bergson’s account of the relations between habit, memory and becoming; and, third, the temporal aspects of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus understood as a (...) set of hereditable dispositions. These different ‘architectures of the person’ are considered with regard to the role they accord habit in trans-generational mechanisms of inheritance; the historicised forms of embodied personhood that they propose; and the manner in which they account for the emergence of a capacity for freedom that can (partially) offset the weight of the inherited past. It is argued that the imputation of such a capacity to some forms of personhood, but not others, is both shaped by and provides the conditions for the operation of liberal forms of government. The manner in which the conduct of those who exhibit such a capacity for freedom is brought under the direction of varied ‘authorities of freedom’ is given particular consideration. (shrink)

In this chapter we first discuss the main principles of justice and note the standard objections to them, which we believe necessitate a hybrid approach. The hybrid account we defend is primarily based on the distributive principle of sufficientarianism, which we interpret as the idea that each country should have the means to provide a minimally decent quality of life for each of its citizens. We argue that sufficientarian considerations give good reason to think that what we call the ‘ability (...) to pay objection’ should be taken much more seriously in this debate. Following this, our account emphasises what we believe are the two most important moral desiderata in any attempt to distribute responsibility for dealing with climate change: the ability to mitigate the problem and the making of culpable contributions to the problem. After noting that our proposal includes enough detail to be a useful start for policy makers, we defend our account against some potential objections. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWorldwide emergence of strongmen leaderships and eroded or failed democracies suggest that the era of unchallenged neoliberal hegemony may be winding down and that alternatives are rising....

‘Sovereignty’, Arendt says, ‘is contradictory to’ the human condition. It is not, in any event, the kind of thing that can be shared across generations. Subsequent generations lack sovereignty to the precise degree that they are bound by the decisions of their predecessors. It is no answer to say that contemporary citizens participate in the sovereignty of a whole, transgenerational people. To paraphrase de Tocqueville, later generations are not free because they are not entirely equal, and they are not equal (...) because they are not entirely free. Where ‘sovereignty’ is a metaphysical concept that transcends time, recognition is an act of the imagination that extends empathy diachronically in both directions. An earlier generation treats its successors with recognition and respect by bequeathing the best system it can manage and entrusting later generations to exercise the same freedom that it enjoyed. Democratic law can exist across generations only through negation. Later citizens may accept as valid the law made by their predecessors. But, in doing so, they implicitly affirm their right to alter, amend, or abolish what came before. Only by freely affirming the choices of their predecessors can current citizens participate in something approaching freedom. (shrink)

In various debates about science, appeal is made to the freedom of scientific research. A rationale in favor of this freedom is rarely offered. In this paper, two major arguments are reconstructed that promise to lend support to a principle of scientific freedom. According to the epistemological argument, freedom of research is required in order to organize the collective cognitive effort we call science efficiently. According to the political argument, scientific knowledge needs to be generated in ways that are independent (...) of the major political powers because of the important role it plays for the citizens and their capacity to form well-informed political preferences. Both arguments are examined critically in order to identify their strengths and limitations. I argue that the scientific freedom established by both rests on a number of critical preconditions, and that the arguments’ force must be weighed against competing societal interests and values in each case of their application. Appeal to a principle of scientific freedom should therefore never mark the end, but rather the beginning of a public debate about the ends and means of science. (shrink)

We mathematical animals should be grateful that mathematics is instrumentally useful. We should not, however, forget its other contributions to human happiness. Bertrand Russell and John Dewey offer timely reminders that provide insight into the role of non-mathematicians in the evaluation of mathematics.

This article undertakes a critical examination of the political philosophy of Richard Rorty with special reference to his treatment of patriotism, pragmatism and democracy. Pragmatism, especially in the work of John Dewey, provided an energetic defence of American democracy, claiming that American democratic culture did not require any philosophical lessons from European social theory. American pragmatism is in this sense a celebration of indigenous political traditions. In his defence of pragmatism and patriotism against the cosmopolitanism of Left cultural critics, Rorty (...) advocates pragmatic ethnocentrism. Through a parallel commentary on socialist internationalism, this article asks whether ‘democracy in one country’ - the United States of America - is either feasible or compatible with the critical legacy of pragmatism. In its response to the growth of international terrorism, especially in its ‘liberation of Iraq’, the United States is in danger of becoming a ‘predatory democracy’. While Rorty has in the past argued that America cannot function as a global policeman, the trend of contemporary international relations is to create an American Empire. The article concludes by arguing that Rorty’s patriotism functions as ‘a final vocabulary’ that contradicts his postmodernism and makes it difficult for modern pragmatism to remain a critical theory. (shrink)

History of education emerges during the course of the nineteenth century in Germany and is marked by four features. It is educational, and not scientific in nature, because it was written primarily for teacher education and training; it is national, or even nationalistic; it is oriented almost exclusively towards German philosophy; and it is indebted to Lutheran Protestantism. This model of pedagogical historiography leaves its mark on the historiographies that emerged later in England, France, and the United States. Taking the (...) example of Rousseau, this contribution makes it clear that these Lutheran and idealist premises lead to a one-sided historiography, so that the republican tradition in which Rousseau stood could be suppressed. On this basis, the paper points up the methodological necessity in historical research to examine contexts, giving up the idea of one history of education in favor of reconstruction of various traditions. The gain lies in making visible suppressed transnational languages that educational reflection made use of for centuries. In particular, a connection is revealed between the republican education of the eighteenth century in Europe and the concern with the issue of the “good citizen” that has preoccupied the American discussion from Jefferson to the Pragmatists to Diane Ravitch. (shrink)

: My project aims to develop a relational, pluralistic political theory that moves us beyond liberal democracy, and to consider how such a theory translates into our public school settings. In this essay I argue that Dewey offers us possibilities for moving beyond one key assumption of classical liberalism, individualism, with his theory of social transaction. I focus my discussion for this paper on Dewey's renascent liberal democracy. I move from a discussion of Dewey's liberal democratic theory to what a (...) relational, pluralistic democratic theory might look like, with Dewey's help. (shrink)

According to care theory the good parent confronting a helpless child has an unmediated impulse to relieve his distress; that impulse grows into a prescriptive ethic of relatedness, often contrasted to the more individualistic ethic of justice. If, however, a child's nature is understood as assertive and competent as well as fragile and dependent; if, in addition, he acquires needs through socialisation and is the beneficiary of inferred needs determined by others, then an ethic of need-gratification is insufficient. Caring theory, (...) with its emphasis on empathy, compassion, and attentiveness to the child's present state undervalues the role of adult restraint and imposition in a rounded caring philosophy. Parents (and teachers) must continuously balance gratification with suppression, support with restraint, engrossment with detachment. From this process emerges a revised relational ethic in which the care/justice distinctions are collapsed. (shrink)

This paper outlines an adverbial approach of value, which it proposes as an alternative to a “nominalistic” one. It starts from a review of a recent book of a French economist, André Orléan, who develops, from the instance of money, a theory of value which he thinks valid for all social values. The paper criticizes the main presuppositions of Orléan’s model of value and tries to elaborate a more praxeological and a more social one.

The boundaries of honesty are the focal point of this exploration of the individualistic origins of modernist ethics and the consequent need for a more pragmatic approach to business ethics. The tendency of modernist ethics to see honesty as an individual responsibility is described as a contextually naive approach, one that fails to account for the interactive effects between individual choices and corporate norms. By reviewing the empirical accounts of managerial struggles with ethical dilemmas, the article arrives at the contextual (...) preconditions for encouraging the development of reflective moral agents in modern corporations. (shrink)

That mathematics makes for poor literature is a conclusion as uninteresting as it is inevitable—inevitable because were mathematical prose to score high on a scale of literary value, this result would do more to discredit the scale than glorify the prose. It may, however, help us better understand our cultural landscape if, without attempting a literary appraisal of mathematics or a mathematical appraisal of literature, we search for some community of interest between the formal sciences and the literary arts. This (...) search for common ground will also be an opportunity to learn from some voices seldom heard in conversations about mathematics. Even at the risk of giving our discussion an antiquated flavor, we will... (shrink)

This paper explores Erich Fromm’s contribution to Deweyan democratic education by referring to his psychoanalytic interpretation of John Dewey’s pragmatic theory. First, it employs the work by Gert Biesta to secure a space between critical pedagogy and Deweyan democratic education, from which Fromm’s theory can be discussed. Furthermore, it argues that Biesta’s perspective offers a valuable theoretical ground to extend the emancipatory potential of Deweyan democratic education, while avoiding some pitfalls of critical pedagogy. Subsequently, the paper contrasts Marcuse’s and Fromm’s (...) views on Dewey to show how Fromm’s understanding of Dewey was more effective than that of Marcuse for developing the potential of Dewey’s philosophy. Next, the paper clarifies key similarities and differences between Fromm’s psychoanalysis and Dewey’s pragmatism, as it is applicable specifically to emancipatory education. Finally, the paper argues that despite the differences between these two thinkers, Fromm’s theory further radicalizes Deweyan democratic education by adding new elements to the list of preconditions on the role of the emancipatory teacher. (shrink)

We identify a normative paradox of responsible management education. Business educators aim to promote social values and develop ethical habits and socially responsible mindsets through education, but they attempt to do so with theories that have normative underpinnings and create actual normative effects that counteract their intentions. We identify a limited conceptualization of freedom in economic theorizing as a cause of the paradox. Economic theory emphasizes individual freedom and understands this as the freedom to choose from available options. However, conceptualizing (...) individuals as profit-maximizing actors neglects their freedom to reflect on the purposes and goals of their actions. We build on the work of pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, who distinguishes between habitualized and creative problem-solving behaviors, conceptualizes knowledge construction as a process of interdependent scientific social inquiry, and understands actors as having the freedom to determine what kind of people they wish to be. We apply pragmatist theory to business education and suggest equipping students with a plurality of theories, supplementing neoclassical economics with other economic perspectives and views from other disciplines on economic behavior. Moreover, we suggest putting students into learning situations that require practical problem solution through interdependent social inquiry, encouraging ethical reflection. In doing so, we contribute by linking the problematic conceptions of freedom identified in economic theorizing to the debate on responsible management education. We conceptualize a pragmatist approach to management education that explicitly re-integrates the freedom to discursively reflect on the individual and societal purpose of business activity and thereby makes existing tools and pedagogies useful for bringing potential freedom back into business. (shrink)

John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein offer devastating critiques of the dominant model of human action that each inherited in their own time. Dewey, very early in his philosophical career, ostensibly put the stimulus–response mechanical understanding of action to rest with his “reflex-arc” concept article. Wittgenstein famously redescribed action as moves within language games that interconnect to constitute an interpretively open-ended form of life. In each case, these fundamental insights serve as heuristics, guiding our intellectual activity with regard to understanding our (...) practices, and as reminders in approaching problems. Several scholars have interpreted Dewey and Wittgenstein as allies in a grand project of... (shrink)

This paper examines the notion of tolerance in education. In general, tolerance is perceived as a means to resist hostility, raise awareness of cultural differences, mitigate violence, and maintain liberal and democratic values. In education, there are various initiatives, such as the International Day for Tolerance (UNESCO in Declaration of principles on tolerance, 1995), that aim to build resilience against different forms of hate and cultivate openness and acceptance of the other. Yet the idea of tolerance includes different understandings and (...) interpretations. This paper argues that cultivating an embodied sense of tolerance among students, in particular in divisive communities, requires us to move beyond deliberative interpretations of tolerance and to advance a pragmatic understanding of tolerance through an agonistic lens. This paper starts with a review of several dominant interpretations of tolerance. The heart of the paper focuses on interpreting Dewey’s pragmatism as a theoretical basis for advancing tolerance. The final part of the paper explores how pragmatism through an agonistic lens can support a more flexible and humane approach to dealing with political conflicts. (shrink)

: In 2000, the Romanian journal Paideia published a series of essays to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of John Dewey. Three articles--by Peter Hlebowitsh, then the editor of Education and Culture; Daniel Tanner, then the president of the John Dewey Society; and William Schubert, past president of the JDS-- were prepared and translated into Romanian for publication. Paideia editor Nicolae Sacalis has contributed an article describing Dewey's influence in Romania. In "The Writings of John Dewey in Romania: (...) Policy and Pedagogy," Sacalis describes the interest in pragmatism of the Romanian intellectuals of the 1920s and 1930s and how Dewey's writings became important to the government's education leaders and school practitioners. Dewey's popularity was so great that a comprehensive overview of his work was published to honor and acknowledge his eightieth birthday. The writings of Dewey were silenced thereafter but not forgotten. His works reappeared in the 1970s for a new generation of Romanian educators, and since the 1989 revolution, his writings have received even greater popularity, leading to the commemoration of his death by Paideia. (shrink)

Recent reform initiatives calling for ‘civic’ professionalism can be seen as a response to the widely reported decline in public trust in the professions and an attempt to partially remedy this problem through a more publically engaged professionalism. The author draws on the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt, identifying the strong, albeit in the professionalism literature rarely acknowledged, affinities between civic professionalism and her concept of action as freedom through public deliberation. Using the three modalities of the active life that (...) Arendt discusses in The Human Condition as analytical tools, the author suggests that changing conditions in the public sector have led to professional life increasingly taking on the forms of labour and work, at the expense of action. The implications of these developments are highlighted before the author proceeds to show that a professional life oriented strongly towards action is consistent with ‘civic’ professionalism based on community engagement. Some of the main approaches traditionally taken to promote a civic orientation among university students are noted; the article concludes with a discussion of how the specific concepts underlying Arendtian action can be put to work in university pedagogies to intentionally promote the public ‘civic-minded professional’. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The article aims to analyse the consciousness of masses in the communication system of the 20th century projecting the individual level onto the social one. _Theoretical basis._ In the fields of philosophy and other humanities since the middle of the last century there has dominated an opinion that the category of mass and its communication are second-rate and non-elitist phenomena. Condensing the experience of human history (especially – the nineteenth century – the time of the bourgeois revolutions and the (...) two world wars), such parameters were set by the creators of social psychology Gustave Le Bon and Sigmund Freud in their basic research "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind", "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego". Since ancient times the masses have really resembled immoral emotional neoformations, which minimized the individual qualities of the components of the whole and showed the features of a predominantly animal nature. It is no coincidence that those masses were called emotional, or just a crowd, regardless of the topos of existence: streets and squares, or the infospace of the first mass media (newspapers, radio, cinema, television). However, analysing the crowd, the scientists noted that this is only an extreme modification of the mass, and, in addition to it, there may be others – quite the opposite in their nature. With the advent of the World Wide Web, the situation has changed: scientists and futurists have been talking about the mass of intellectuals, which seems to be formed and combined in the field of information technology. And it surpasses the traditional elite in many respects. _Originality._ Having analysed the works of classic and modern researchers, we came to the conclusion that in fact the masses, like individuals (according to C. G. Jung), are divided into four types. Correspondingly, each of them has its own behaviour, psychology, philosophy etc. This article focuses on beliefs and ideological positions as the basis for the functioning of emotional, sensory, intuitive and rational masses in the context of 20th century philosophy. The object of our analysis was the philosophical schools of neo-positivism, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, existentialism, pragmatism, anthropology, phenomenology, and others. _Conclusions._ According to our assumption, regardless of the type of mass and direction of modern philosophy as a field of its implementation, rationalism comes to the fore everywhere (as a primary source and theoretical basis or motivation). Thus, it can be concluded that the rational mass now dominates, not emotional (which was thoroughly described by Le Bon and Freud). And this is quite natural in the age of digital technology. (shrink)

Almost a hundred years ago, John Dewey clarified the relationship between democracy and education. However, the enactment of a 'deeply democratic' educational practice has proven elusive throughout the ensuing century, overridden by managerial approaches to schooling young people and to the standardized, technical preparation and professional development of teachers and educational leaders. A powerful counter-narrative to this 'standardized management paradigm' exists in the field of curriculum studies, but is largely ignored by mainstream approaches to the professional development of educators. This (...) paper argues for a reconceptualized, differentiated, and 'disciplined' approach to the professional development of educators in democratic societies that builds capacity for curriculum leadership. In support of this proposal, we amplify the tenets of Dewey's pragmatic social and educational philosophy, which have long been at the heart of democratic educational thought, with Badiou's more contemporary thinking about the important relationships between truth as inspirational awakening, subjectification as existential commitment, and ethical fidelity as 'for all' action. (shrink)

When talk of philosophy of pedagogy comes up today, it is common to hear the names of Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey, or Paulo Freire, but the name of Paul Goodman, who campaigned vigorously for pedagogical reform much of his life, is seldom mentioned. In spite of neglect of his work, Goodman had much to say on pedagogical practice that is rich, poignant, and relevant today. In consequence, it is unfortunate that he is seldom read and discussed today. This essay (...) is an attempt to fill in the gap in the scholarship. I begin by presenting an elaboration of Goodman's key insights. I then offer a critical analysis of those pedagogical insights. (shrink)

The power of the digital platforms and the increasing scope of their control over individuals and institutions have begun to generate societal concern. However, the ways in which digital platforms exercise power and organize immaturity—defined as the erosion of the individual’s capacity for public use of reason—have not yet been theorized sufficiently. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capitals, and habitus, we take a sociosymbolic perspective on platforms’ power dynamics, characterizing the digital habitus and identifying specific forms of platform power (...) and counterpower accumulation. We make two main contributions. First, we expand the concept of organized immaturity by adopting a sociological perspective, from which we develop a novel sociosymbolic view of platforms’ power dynamics. Our framework explains fundamental aspects of immaturity, such as self-infliction and emergence. Second, we contribute to the platform literature by developing a three-phase model of platform power dynamics over time. (shrink)

Statements of need are used promiscuously by caretakers and children. The term may refer to mere wants (desire), to wants that have become socialized into secondary needs, to needs inferred by adults based on interpretations of future adaptive requirements, as well as to fundamental needs required for a child's well-being. It is important to distinguish the various uses of the term, first, because need carries an imperative-it would be unethical to frustrate a child's basic needs. Second, when confounding meanings, there (...) is the risk that what appears as an expression of concern-'you need to'-is more arbitrarily coercive than benevolent. Because even genuine needs are multiple and often in tension (protection and independence), separating meanings does not necessarily determine appropriate responses. Caretakers are advised to critically refine and reflect their need statements and, when balancing, remain faithful to the fundamental human need for autonomy. (shrink)

This paper aims at renovating the prospects for social philosophy through a confrontation between pragmatism and critical theory. In particular, it contends that the resources of pragmatism for advancing a project of emancipatory social philosophy have so far been neglected. After contrasting the two major traditions in social philosophy—the analytical and the critical—I proceed to outline the main traits of a pragmatist social philosophy. By inscribing pragmatism within the tradition of social philosophy, my aim is to promote a new understanding (...) of pragmatism as one of the central Euro-American traditions in social and political philosophy, deserving to be on an equal footing with critical theory and political liberalism. And, furthermore, one whose critical and radical force may be of great help in the wake of the dismissal of the metaphysical certainties upon which the critical program of social philosophy had once set its hopes of social emancipation. (shrink)

(2011). Playing with Fire, or the Stuffing of Dead Animals: Freire, Dewey, and the Dilemma of Social Studies Reform. Educational Studies: Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 71-91.

Similarities between pragmatist models of democracy and deliberative models have been explored over recent years, most notably in this journal ( Talisse 2004). However, the work of Iris Marion Young has, thus far, not figured in such comparative analyses and historical weighing of pragmatist antecedents in deliberativist work. In what follows, I wish to redress this oversight by placing Young in conversation with John Dewey and Jane Addams. Young's particular brand of deliberative theorizing focuses on the inclusion of women and (...) all those deemed Other in our democracies. She identifies a significant shortcoming in standard expositions of deliberative thought, pointing out that communicative style, structured by oppressive norms of gender, race, and class, to name but a few, may serve to undermine our full participation in political decision making. While this forms a valuable insight for those seeking to redress the exclusion of Others in democracies, it also draws attention to the centrality of differences of communication in deliberative settings. In what follows, I will highlight the integral role played by communication in Young's and Dewey's expositions of democracy while showing that Addams foreshadows Young's principal insight through an appreciation of communicative difference and its attendant political implications. (shrink)

Dewey's theory of happiness goes against the grain of much contemporary psychologic and popular thought by identifying the highest form of human happiness with moral behavior. Such happiness, according to Dewey, avoids being at the mercy of circumstances because it is independent of the pleasures and successes we take from experience and, instead, is dependent upon the disposition we bring to experience. It accompanies a disposition characterized by an abiding interest in objects in which all can share, one founded upon (...) a dynamic inner harmony and evolving adjustment to the world. The marks of such an expansive disposition are "stability of character, braveness of soul, and equanimity of soul," and the key to the development of these traits is what Dewey calls "ethical love." We conclude with consideration of three potential criticisms of Dewey's view of happiness and possible Deweyan rejoinders. (shrink)

Knowledge-based development is education writ large. Therefore this paper approaches the idea of a knowledge-based development institution ("Knowledge Bank") from the viewpoint of philosophy of education, educational psychology, and pedagogical theory applied to the problems of development.

Diggins brings Reinhold Niebuhr into the post-structuralist dialogue, and demonstates that his writings are the more constructive about the human predicament. "[I]n Niebuhr power and morality meet in one, with a suspicious glance at the disavowal of power and the pretensions of morality.".

Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914–1977) was born in a rural community and spent most of her life in a slum. Despite this, her literary work achieved remarkable editorial success, having its value recognized by critics and academic circles. This paper analyzes Carolina Maria de Jesus’s autobiographical narratives in the light of John Dewey’s aesthetic theory, with the purpose of investigating the factors responsible for the development of her aesthetic sensitivity – intellectual and emotional dispositions favorable to involvement with (...) artistic practices. The results suggest that Carolina Maria de Jesus’s literary skills, which express not only individual but also collective yearnings, resulted from the incentive she received to think about things that do not exist and from her relationship with people who favored the formation of a personality open to varied experiences. Such results are presented as requirements for a democratic and humanist education that aims at the flowering of aesthetic sensitivity and encourages educators and students to believe in their creative potential. (shrink)

In this paper, we take inspiration from original institutional economics (OIE) as an approach to study value change within the highly complex assembly of sociotechnical transformations that make up the energy transition. OIE is examined here as a suitable perspective, as it combines Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy and a methodological interactionist perspective on value change, behavior and institutions, with technology figuring as a transformational factor. This combination overcomes conceptual and methodological shortcomings of alternative accounts of values. We will present the contours (...) of an OIE based conceptual framework connecting nature, humans, technology, the economic process, society, culture and institutions and habits, valuation and behavior. We illustrate how to use this framework to examine and understand how environmental, ecologic, safety, economic, and social concerns about the energy transition are (re)framed as (new) values in the belief systems and habits of individuals and groups. Moreover, we will explore how that may give rise to collective action, via the institutionalization of such revised values in the procedures, arrangements, norms and incentives guiding transactions. As such, this approach allows us in a fine-grained manner to conceptually and theoretically understand the way in which values change in the energy-transition, as a complex interaction of technology development and social relations. (shrink)

Historically, the most interesting phases to me are those in which some events are treated, whether for praise or blame, reward or punishment, as dangerous revolts or as promising innovations—generally both at once.February 2, 1945, was an eventful day in the international press. In Pravda, the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, journalist Boris Polevoi introduced to the world “The Factory of Death at Auschwitz” (1945). Shaken by the horrors he witnessed after the (...) Soviet liberation of the camp, he described in graphic detail the remains of an “electric conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were simultaneously electrocuted,” and a staggering mass of inmates, “so worn .. (shrink)

Around the time of World War II, just as the American state was acquiring new levels of capacity for autonomous action, the state was dropped from American social science, as part of the reaction to the rise of totalitarianism. All traces of state autonomy, now understood as “state coercion,” were expunged from the image of American democracy. In this ideological climate, the “society‐centered” frameworks of pluralism and structural‐functionalism that Skocpol criticizes swept the field. Skocpol's call for a return to a (...) Weberian understanding of the (potential) autonomy of government administrators may be complemented by a Weberian understanding of the (potential) autonomy of democratic leaders. (shrink)

Research Articles James W. Ceaser, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

The ubiquitousness of failures in new information systems designs and implementations indicates that the design methodologies that the field has developed are inadequate or faulty. This paper points to the body of knowledge developed from design research as a potential source of expertise for developing design methods that are more successful. The paper describes a meta-theoretical method for classifying theories in the Information Systems field, and identifying areas that need farther development.

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