It is an ancient view, to be found even in Aristotle’s analysis of friendship, that the other is an alter ego, another myself. More recently, this conception has provoked spirited debate within and without the phenomenological tradition. It can be found in a wide variety of texts, from Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations to Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?” The basic position can be summarized as follows. Intentional experiences are subjective, first-person experiences, not objective, third-person experiences.

ABSTRACT Behaviourism and instrumentalism continue to exert an important influence in education. Its discourse is infected with scientism, especially in the language of curriculum design and methodology. Theory and practice are peculiarly impervious to criticism from philosophy of education: however pertinent and accurate this may be, it seems to fail to reach the heart of the problem. This paper looks for a different approach. An apparent digression (into another form of educational discourse) is used to provide an alternative focus for (...) criticism. This exposes problems in conventional analyses and presents a new basis for questioning the health of educational discourse. (shrink)

Behaviourism and instrumentalism continue to exert an important influence in education. Its discourse is infected with scientism, especially in the language of curriculum design and methodology. Theory and practice are peculiarly impervious to criticism from philosophy of education: however pertinent and accurate this may be, it seems to fail to reach the heart of the problem. This paper looks for a different approach. An apparent digression (into another form of educational discourse) is used to provide an alternative focus for criticism. (...) This exposes problems in conventional analyses and presents a new basis for questioning the health of educational discourse. (shrink)