The article aims at showing that the philosophical personalism of Pope John Paul II stems from the common sense approach to reality. First, it presents Karol Wojtyla as a framer of the Lublin Philosophical School, to which he was affiliated for 24 years before being elected Pope John Paul II; it shows Wojtyla’s role in establishing this original philosophical School by his contribution to its endorsement of Thomism, its way of doing philosophy, and its (...) classically understood personalism. Secondly, it identifies a purpose of Wojtyla’s use of the phenomenological method in his personalism and reconstructs Wojtyla’s possible answer to the question whether there is a link between moral sense and common sense in human experience. (shrink)

Longchen Rabjampa (1308–64), scholar of the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma tradition, presents a novel doxographical taxonomy of the so-called Svātantrika branch of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, designating the Indian Mādhyamika Śrīgupta (c. 7th/8th century) as the exemplar of a Svātantrika sub-school which maintains that appearance and emptiness are metaphysically distinct. This paper compares Longchenpa’s characterization of this “distinct-appearance-and-emptiness” view with Śrīgupta’s own account of the two truths. I expose a significant disconnect between Longchenpa’s Śrīgupta and Śrīgupta himself and argue that the (...) impetus for Longchenpa’s doxographical innovation originates not in Buddhist India, but within his own Tibetan intellectual milieu, tracing back to his twelfth-century Sangpu Monastery predecessors, Gyamarwa and Chapa. (shrink)

This paper is a history of philosophy in Australia in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It considers, among other things: (1) the state of the higher education sector; (2) the state of the humanities; (3) the state of philosophy in the academy; (4) support for philosophy in the academy; (5) the role of philosophy beyond the academy; (6) changes in philosophical practice in this decade,; (7) changes in the teaching of philosophy in this decade; and (8) the (...) domains of inquiry in which philosophers worked in this decade. (shrink)

In this book I offer a critical, comparative and empirically-informed defense of Islamic schools in the West. To do so I elaborate an idealized philosophy of Islamic education, against which I evaluate the situation in three different Western countries. I examine in detail notions of cultural coherence, the scope of parental authority v. a child's interests, as well as the state's role in regulating religious schools. Further, using Catholic schools as an analogous case, I speculate on the likely future of (...) Western Islamic schools. (shrink)

This paper presents the history of the Frankfurt School’s inclusion of normative concerns in social science research programs during the period 1930-1955. After examining the relevant methodology, I present a model of how such a program could look today. I argue that such an approach is both valuable to contemporary social science programs and overlooked by current philosophers and social scientists.

In this paper I attempt to trace an entanglement of an event documented in my PhD research which contests dominant modes of enquiry. It is experimental research which resists the human subject as the most important aspect of research, the only one with agency or intentionality. In particular, I analyse the process of the making of the circle, and how integral it is in contributing to building the Community of Enquiry, the pedagogy of Philosophy with Children. I offer a critical (...) posthuman analysis which engages with the material-discursive entanglements of the making of the circle. I move beyond the linguistic turn by paying attention to the intra-actions in between human and more-than-human, place, the circle and the chairs. I show how the mainly authoritarian adult-child relationships prevalent in most South African schools, can be disrupted through this pedagogical approach. This research takes place with a group of Grade 2 learners in a government school in South Africa. (shrink)

This is a collection of new investigations and discoveries on the history of a great tradition, the Lvov-Warsaw School of logic , philosophy and mathematics, by the best specialists from all over the world. The papers range from historical considerations to new philosophical, logical and mathematical developments of this impressive School, including applications to Computer Science, Mathematics, Metalogic, Scientific and Analytic Philosophy, Theory of Models and Linguistics.

In this paper I attempt to trace some entanglements of an event documented in my PhD research, which contests dominant modes of enquiry. This research takes place with a group of Grade 2 learners in a government school in Cape Town, South Africa. It is experimental research which resists the human subject as the most important aspect of research, the only one with agency or intentionality. In particular, the analysis focuses on the process of the making of the circle, (...) and how integral it is in contributing to building the Community of Enquiry, the pedagogy of Philosophy with Children. A critical posthuman analysis is offered which engages with the material-discursive entanglements of the making of the circle. Also, how this making of a circle can be a democratising practice, by including in the concept of democracy, the more-than-human. The analysis also focuses on the placing of the chairs by the children, as a deliberate pedagogical practice, and how this works to disrupt the adult /child binary. There is a move beyond the linguistic turn by paying attention to not only the discursive in the transcriptions but also the intra-actions in between human and more-than-human, the circle, the chairs and the materiality of place. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss Safavid period Islamic philosopher Sadraddin Shirazi’s philosophical methodology and the sources of the school founded by him. The article relies on research conducted on Shirazi philosophy. It shows that Shirazi through synthesizing the methods of the earlier schools that existed in Islam to acquire knowledge devised a new mechanism for acquiring knowledge. Before coming to Shirazi, intellectual movements formed during Islam’s classical period, such as peripateticism, illuminationism, theology and Gnosticism, were (...) of different views regarding the best way to reach the truth. For example, for peripatetics reason, for theologians revelation, for gnostics/mystics intuition or personal experience were important, but ishraqi school was somewhere between peripatetic and Gnostic schools. Sadraddin Shirazi, though, considered all these agents necessary, for they complement each other, and said they should be utilized altogether to obtain ultimate reality. Similarly, considering his philosophical sources, we see that he is influenced almost by all philosophical schools as well as religious sources. However, Ibn Sina and Ibn Arabi’s influence on him was more profound compared to other philosophers. (shrink)

The paper explicates the stages of the author’s philosophical evolution in the light of Kopnin’s ideas and heritage. Starting from Kopnin’s understanding of dialectical materialism, the author has stated that category transformations of physics has opened from conceptualization of immutability to mutability and then to interaction, evolvement and emergence. He has connected the problem of physical cognition universals with an elaboration of the specific system of tools and methods of identifying, individuating and distinguishing objects from a scientific theory domain. (...) The role of vacuum conception and the idea of existence (actual and potential, observable and nonobservable, virtual and hidden) types were analyzed. In collaboration with S.Crymski heuristic and regulative functions of categories of substance, world as a whole as well as postulates of relativity and absoluteness, and anthropic and self-development principles were singled out. Elaborating Kopnin’s view of scientific theories as a practically effective and relatively true mapping of their domains, the author in collaboration with M. Burgin have originated the unified structure-nominative reconstruction (model) of scientific theory as a knowledge system. According to it, every scientific knowledge system includes hierarchically organized and complex subsystems that partially and separately have been studied by standard, structuralist, operationalist, problem-solving, axiological and other directions of the current philosophy of science. 1) The logico-linguistic subsystem represents and normalizes by means of different, including mathematical, languages and normalizes and logical calculi the knowledge available on objects under study. 2) The model-representing subsystem comprises peculiar to the knowledge system ways of their modeling and understanding. 3) The pragmatic-procedural subsystem contains general and unique to the knowledge system operations, methods, procedures, algorithms and programs. 4) From the viewpoint of the problem-heuristic subsystem, the knowledge system is a unique way of setting and resolving questions, problems, puzzles and tasks of cognition of objects into question. It also includes various heuristics and estimations (truth, consistency, beauty, efficacy, adequacy, heuristicity etc) of components and structures of the knowledge system. 5) The subsystem of links fixes interrelations between above-mentioned components, structures and subsystems of the knowledge system. The structure-nominative reconstruction has been used in the philosophical and comparative case-studies of mathematical, physical, economic, legal, political, pedagogical, social, and sociological theories. It has enlarged the collection of knowledge structures, connected, for instance, with a multitude of theoreticity levels and with an application of numerous mathematical languages. It has deepened the comprehension of relations between the main directions of current philosophy of science. They are interpreted as dealing mainly with isolated subsystems of scientific theory. This reconstruction has disclosed a variety of undetected knowledge structures, associated also, for instance, with principles of symmetry and supersymmetry and with laws of various levels and degrees. In cooperation with the physicist Olexander Gabovich the modified structure-nominative reconstruction is in the processes of development and justification. Ideas and concepts were also in the center of Kopnin’s cognitive activity. The author has suggested and elaborated the triplet model of concepts. According to it, any scientific concept is a dependent on cognitive situation, dynamical, multifunctional state of scientist’s thinking, and available knowledge system. A concept is modeled as being consisted from three interrelated structures. 1) The concept base characterizes objects falling under a concept as well as their properties and relations. In terms of volume and content the logical modeling reveals partially only the concept base. 2) The concept representing part includes structures and means (names, statements, abstract properties, quantitative values of object properties and relations, mathematical equations and their systems, theoretical models etc.) of object representation in the appropriate knowledge system. 3) The linkage unites a structures and procedures that connect components from the abovementioned structures. The partial cases of the triplet model are logical, information, two-tired, standard, exemplar, prototype, knowledge-dependent and other concept models. It has introduced the triplet classification that comprises several hundreds of concept types. Different kinds of fuzziness are distinguished. Even the most precise and exact concepts are fuzzy in some triplet aspect. The notions of relations between real scientific concepts are essentially extended. For example, the definition and strict analysis of such relations between concepts as formalization, quantification, mathematization, generalization, fuzzification, and various kinds of identity are proposed. The concepts «PLANET» and «ELEMENTARY PARTICLE» and some of their metamorphoses were analyzed in triplet terms. The Kopnin’s methodology and epistemology of cognition was being used for creating conception of the philosophy of law as elaborating of understanding, justification, estimating and criticizing legal system. The basic information on the major directions in current Western philosophy of law (legal realism, feminism, criticism, postmodernism, economical analysis of law etc.) is firstly introduced to the Ukrainian audience. The classification of more than fifty directions in modern legal philosophy is suggested. Some results of historical, linguistic, scientometric and philosophic-legal studies of the present state of Ukrainian academic science are given. (shrink)

Ancient philosophical schools developed and discussed perspectives and practices on the emotion of anger useful in contemporary philosophical practice with clients, groups, and organizations. This paper argues the case for incorporating these insights from four main philosophical schools (Platonist, Aristotelian, Epicurean, and Stoic) sets out eight practices drawn from these schools, and discusses how these insights can be used by philosophical practitioners with clients.

The small school movement originated in the democratic ideology of Deborah Meier, who sought to create schools that gave students, parents, teachers, and all stakeholders in the communities they served a voice in education. In New York City, Meier's vision was implemented haphazardly by a group of business and political elites able to pour millions of dollars into an initiative without carefully considering the complex interests involved in creating new small schools. According to this author, this lack of forethought (...) placed students and parents at an even greater disadvantage than had existed previously. It was thought that the creation of small schools of choice would provide students, parents, and families the most appropriate education for their children, and that free market practices would create an environment of increased accountability and transparency, which would improve educational outcomes for all students. The author argues that these measures failed to improve educational equity and opportunities for students, and that they also placed students most in-need at an even greater disadvantage, thus hurting the very children these laws were created to help. She supports this argument using a critique of neoliberalism in the context of education as defined by Michael Apple, John Rawls's original position, and the application of Rawls's position in an educational context by Barry Bull. (shrink)

Nietzsche scholars have developed an interest in his use of “thick” moral psychological concepts such as virtues and emotions. This development coincides with a renewed interest among both philosophers and social scientists in virtues, the emotions, and moral psychology more generally. Contemporary work in empirical moral psychology posits contempt and disgust as both basic emotions and moral foundations of normative codes. While virtues can be individuated in various ways, one attractive principle of individuation is to index them to characteristic emotions (...) and the patterns of behavior those emotions motivate. Despite the surge in attention to Nietzsche’s use of emotions, the literature has tended to lump all emotional states together. In this paper, I argue that what Nietzsche calls the pathos of distance is best understood as the virtue associated with both contempt and disgust. I conclude with a discussion of the bleak prospects for a Nietzschean democratic ethos. (shrink)

Many philosophers argue that religious schools are guilty of indoctrinatory harm. I think they are right to be worried about that. But in this article, I will postulate that there are other harms for many individuals that are more severe outside the religious school. Accordingly the full scope of harm should be taken into account when evaluating the harm that some religious schools may do. Once we do that, I suggest, justice may require that we choose the lesser harm. (...) To simplify matters, I focus my attention on the stigmatic harm done to Muslims, and the role that Islamic schools might be expected to play in mitigating that harm. If the full weight of stigmatic harm is factored into the ethical analysis concerning Islamic schools, then I suggest that there are sufficiently weighty pro tanto reasons for Muslim parents to prefer an Islamic school over the alternatives, notwithstanding the potential indoctrinatory harm. (shrink)

Almost twenty years ago, a genuinely new school of thought emerged in the field of jurisprudential methodology. It is a pragmatist school. Roughly, the pragmatists contend that, when inquiring about the nature of law, we should evaluate potential answers based on practical criteria. For many legal philosophers, this contention seems both unclear and unhinged. That appearance is lamentable. The pragmatist approach to jurisprudential methodology has received insufficient attention for at least two reasons. First, the pragmatists do not conceive (...) of themselves as comprising a school; in fact, these proponents have different names for their common position, which makes it hard to see the commonalities. Second, the most famous statement of the pragmatist view has received withering criticism, criticism that has not been sufficiently answered, a fact that may lead opponents of pragmatism, as well as potential supporters, to doubt that a viable view of this kind can be held. This Essay aims to serve as a corrective. (shrink)

Este texto pretende discutir, do ponto de vista kantiano, o que pode ser ensinado e o que pode ser aprendido em Filosofia. Seu objetivo é construir os argumentos hipotéticos de Kant em face do método estruturalista de leitura de textos filosóficos. Para circunscrever este tema, aparentemente muito amplo, tomaremos como fi o condutor um célebre texto de aula de I. Kant, publicado por G. B. Jäsche sob o título Manual dos Cursos de Lógica Geral. Kant ministrou este curso por mais (...) de quarenta anos, até o término de suas atividades docentes em 1797, e nele apresenta considerações bastante fecundas e atuais sobre o ensino da História da Filosofia e sobre a formação do filósofo. A partir da distinção entre conhecimento histórico e conhecimento racional, e da distinção entre o conceito de filosofia na escola e o conceito de filosofia no mundo (AK 9:24), procuraremos apresentar as contribuições kantianas que podem ainda ser consideradas pertinentes para se discutir o modo de ensinar Filosofia e a formação do filósofo. (shrink)

In this article, I examine a case involving an equity-minded parent caught in a quandary about which school to select for her child, knowing that her decision may have consequences for others. To do so, I heuristically construct a fictional portrait and explore the deliberative process a parent might have through a dialogue taking place among ‘friends’, where each friend personifies a different set of ethical considerations. I then briefly consider two competing philosophical assessments but argue that neither (...) position helpfully assists in resolving the quandary. To conclude, I ask the provocative question whether parental motives – but also their school choices – actually matter if the inequitable outcomes seem to remain unchanged. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Queer Theory Meets Liberalism: Futurity, Autonomy and Flourishing Liberal Autonomy and ‘Futurity’ Equal Consideration: What is the Difference between Spelunking and Queerness? Queer Children and the Family Liberalism, the Common School Ideal and Queer Futures Conclusion: Queer Theory and Liberalism—Is a Civil Union Possible? Notes References.

Inspired by the practice of dialogue in ancient philosophical schools, the Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL) Project at the University of Notre Dame has sought to put dialogue back at the center of philosophical pedagogy. Impromptu philosophical dialogue, however, can be challenging for students who are new to philosophy. Anticipating this challenge, the Project has created a series of manuals to help instructors conduct dialogue groups with novice philosophy students. Using these guidelines, we incorporated PWOL-style (...) dialogue groups into our Spring 2021 course “The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender” with the hope that, through having conversations about these challenging topics, our students would both be able to practice having philosophical dialogues as well as form their views on race and gender in light of contributions from their diverse peers. This article examines several strategies for how instructors can seek to incorporate similar dialogues into their own introductory classroom. (shrink)

The Introduction outlines, in a concise way, the history of the Lvov-Warsaw School—a most unique Polish school of worldwide renown, which pioneered trends combining philosophy, logic, mathematics and language. The author accepts that the beginnings of the School fall on the year 1895, when its founder Kazimierz Twardowski, a disciple of Franz Brentano, came to Lvov on his mission to organize a scientific circle. Soon, among the characteristic features of the School was its serious approach towards (...) philosophical studies and teaching of philosophy, dealing with philosophy and propagation of it as an intellectual and moral mission, passion for clarity and precision, as well as exchange of thoughts, and cooperation with representatives of other disciplines. The genesis is followed by a chronological presentation of the development of the School in the successive years. The author mentions all the key representatives of the School, accompanying the names with short descriptions of their achievements. The development of the School after Poland’s regaining independence in 1918 meant part of the members moving from Lvov to Warsaw, thus providing the other segment to the name—Warsaw School of Logic. The author dwells longer on the activity of the School during the Interwar period—the time of its greatest prosperity, which ended along with the outbreak of World War 2. Attempts made after the War to recreate the spirit of the School are also outlined and the names of continuators are listed accordingly. The presentation ends with some concluding remarks on the contribution of the School to contemporary developments in the fields of philosophy, mathematical logic or computer science in Poland. (shrink)

The Introduction outlines, in a concise way, the history of the Lvov-Warsaw School – a most unique Polish school of worldwide renown, which pioneered trends combining philosophy, logic, mathematics and language. The author accepts that the beginnings of the School fall on the year 1895, when its founder Kazimierz Twardowski, a disciple of Franz Brentano, came to Lvov on his mission to organize a scientific circle. Soon, among the characteristic features of the School was its serious (...) approach towards philosophical studies and teaching of philosophy, dealing with philosophy and propagation of it as an intellectual and moral mission, passion for clarity and precision, as well as exchange of thoughts, and cooperation with representatives of other disciplines.The genesis is followed by a chronological presentation of the development of the School in the successive years. The author mentions all the key representatives of the School (among others, Ajdukiewicz, Lesniewski, Łukasiewicz,Tarski), accompanying the names with short descriptions of their achievements. The development of the School after Poland’s regaining independence in 1918 meant part of the members moving from Lvov to Warsaw, thus providing the other segment to the name – Warsaw School of Logic. The author dwells longer on the activity of the School during the Interwar period – the time of its greatest prosperity, which ended along with the outbreak of World War 2. Attempts made after the War to recreate the spirit of the School are also outlined and the names of followers are listed accordingly. The presentation ends with some concluding remarks on the contribution of the School to contemporary developments in the fields of philosophy, mathematical logic or computer science in Poland. (shrink)

A central task of schooling is to cultivate reasonableness in students. In this chapter we show how the teaching of reasonableness can be practiced successfully in secondary schools, using materials from the Western Australian curriculum. The discussion proceeds in four stages. We first defend the claim that the teaching of reasonable is a key aim of schooling. Here we offer an account of reasonableness, which we take to be both a skill and a disposition. Students learn reasonableness through the practice (...) of specific skills such as open and curious questioning, clarifying, and categorizing, and evaluating the merits of each contribution toward the problem or question under consideration. Reasonableness comes about as a joint commitment between the individual and the group to be honest in their views, to take care of those views, and for everyone to recognize that each member is a partial bearer of truth. Secondly, we discuss the pedagogies that cultivate reasonableness. The Philosophical Community of Inquiry is a natural pedagogy for this purpose. This can be supplemented with the thinking tools approach of Cam’s Twenty Thinking Tools or Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines. In addition, we introduce our own two skill-building exercises, the Reasoning Game and the Argument Game. Thirdly, we show how this approach can be applied not just in Philosophy classes, but in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We argue that our approach brings these subjects to life, it develops understanding and reasonableness, and it bumps up student engagement. Fourthly, we discuss the assessment of reasonableness. In this type of learning environment, the way students perform in the philosophical community of inquiry is the focus of assessment. The desirable qualities of being reasonable become the assessment criteria for an on-balanced judgment about the student. (shrink)

As Bhaskar (1989:1) argues, we need to take philosophy seriously because it underwrites both what constitutes science and knowledge and which political practices are deemed legitimate. At present, the field of educational research internationally is witnessing a pragmatist trend, whereby practical education research is carried out without reference to ontological and epistemological concerns. For David Reynolds, a leading UK school effectiveness academic, '[p]recisely because we did not waste time on philosophical discussion or on values debates, we made rapid (...) progress' (1998:20). Equally, for Teddlie, '[t]he orientation of many in the US is to do rather than to reflect […] In reality many practitioners are currently interested in what could work at their school […rather…] than in ruminations about social inequalities associated with different socioeconomic classes' (Teddlie and Reynolds 2000:27). The purpose of this chapter is not only to reclaim critical realist social philosophy for educational research, but also to reclaim reality from the positivist and statistical methodology that underpins School Effectiveness Research (SER) and to make clear the difference that realism makes by virtue of its critical explanatory power in unmasking the ideological nature of SER and its adoption by New Labour. (shrink)

The name the “Prague school of Brentano” refers to three generations of thinkers who temporarily or permanently lived in Prague, bound together by teacher/student relationships, and who accepted the main views of Franz Brentano’s philosophy. This chapter discusses central aspects of the philosophical work done in the School.

The author criticizes ways in which academic disciplines can be viewed as skewed toward bureaucratized intellect and its requirements and rewards, rather than toward scholarly intellectual life and research. Drawing from the Chicago traditions of sociology and philosophical pragmatism, as well as his own experience of them, Halton goes on to appraise ways in which these traditions have tended to become contracted to limited textbook canons. Donald Levine’s Visions of the Sociological Tradition provides a case in which the broad (...) influences of European intellectual traditions, for example, Nietzsche, are included in his sociological history of European sociological traditions, whereas similar influences, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thorstein Veblen, Jane Addams, Lewis Mumford, or even C. Wright Mills, are excluded from his account of the American and Chicago traditions. Admitting that academic disciplines represent skewed forms of bureaucratized intellect rather than progressive traditions allows one to admit those who are not members of the club into the dialogue of social thought and the social sciences. (shrink)

Shahāb ad-Dīn" Yahya ibn Habash ibn Amirak as-Suhrawardī, (also Shaikh al-Ishraq, Shaikh al-Maqtul) was founder of the illuminationist school (Ar. Hikmat al-ishraq; Pers. falsafaye ešrāqi ). Derived from “illumination,” a conventional translation of the Arabic term ishraq (lit. radiance, shining of the rising sun), “illuminationism” refers to the doctrine of the Ishraqiyyun, a school of philosophical and mystical thought of various Graeco-Oriental roots whose principles were propounded as an ancient “science of lights” (‘ilm al-anwar) . He chose (...) this title to distinguish his philosophical theory from mashshaī's philosophy; and he is one of the first philosophers to elaborate on an old tradition. His approach Adopted from Zoroastrian and Platonic ideas. In fact, he associates his science of lights principally with the names of Plato, Hermes, Empedokles, Pythagoras, and the ‘Oriental principle concerning light and darkness’ of the sages of ancient Iran. (shrink)

The philosophies of education serve as the guide of the teachers in handling the teaching-learning process. However, a belief will remain as a belief unless it is practiced. This study aimed to find the relationship between the philosophical beliefs and practices of the 30 teachers of the schools in San Roque, Mabini, Bohol - San Roque Elementary School and San Roque National High School, S.Y. 2019-2020. The study utilized a quantitative method descriptive survey research design. The research (...) instrument used was a self-constructed questionnaire in which the reliability was tested by a Cronbach’s Alpha using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software. Simple percentage and weighted mean were some of the statistical treatments used. Kendall’s tau_b, a non-parametric test, was used to determine the correlation between philosophical beliefs and their equivalent pedagogical practices. All of the statistical treatments were also run using the SPSS software. Further, the researcher assured the proper observation of the research ethics protocol. Based on the results, the philosophies of Progressivism (3.63) and Perennialism (3.31) were the most and least prevailing philosophical beliefs, respectively. On the other hand, the most and least prevailing philosophies practiced are Progressivism (3.69) and Essentialism (3.19), respectively. Moreover, research findings revealed that there was a significant relationship between the philosophical beliefs of teachers and their pedagogical practices. In conclusion, this study claims that teachers’ pedagogical practices are dependent to their philosophical beliefs; and as the teachers believed on a particular philosophy of education, they practice it accordingly to the extent of their adherence to the belief. (shrink)

Susanne Langer was a student at Radcliffe College between 1916 and 1926---a highly transitional period in the history of American philosophy. Intellectual generalists such as William James, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce had dominated philosophical debates at the turn of the century but the academic landscape gradually started to shift in the years after World War I. Many scholars of the new generation adopted a more piecemeal approach to philosophy---solving clearly delineated, technical puzzles using the so-called “method of logical (...) analysis”. Especially at Harvard, the intellectual climate rapidly changed. The department hired several philosophers who had contributed to the development of symbolic logic---H. M. Sheffer, C. I. Lewis, and A. N. Whitehead---and Harvard quickly began to be viewed as a central hub for analytic philosophy in the United States. This chapter contextualizes Langer’s earliest work by reading it through the lens of this shifting academic environment. Though Harvard did not allow women to take its courses until 1943, Langer is one of the most significant fruits of this period. Her dissertation “A Logical Analysis of Meaning” and her first publications are all illustrations of the approach that came to dictate the American philosophical conversation. By exploring the increased focus on the logical-analytic method and Langer’s attempts to expand the new approach to what she later called “non-discursive” symbolisms, I situate her publications in the intellectual context of the 1920s. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to discern intersections between the intellectual path of the young Habermas and the issues addressed by the Positivismusstreit, the dispute between Popper and Adorno about methodology in the social sciences. I will present two perspectives, focusing on different temporal moments and interpretative problems. First, I will investigate the young Habermas’ relationship to the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School: his views on philosophy and the social sciences, normative bases of critical theory and political (...) attitudes. Second, I will reconstruct Habermas’ contemplation of the Positivismusstreit, in light of his social scientific research programme in the 1960s. The thesis supported is that Habermas developed a position diverging from those of Adorno and Horkheimer, and that his position reasserted the agenda of the ‘first critical theory’. This article highlight the discontinuity between the first and the second generation of the Frankfurt School, the constructive openness to other philosophical and sociological traditions, as well as the aporias of a theory of knowledge not yet oriented towards the programme of reconstructive sciences. (shrink)

Franz Brentano’s works are not just full of deep and innovative insights into mind, world and values. His views also turned out to be highly influential upon several generations of students, who made them the basis of their own philosophical investigations, giving rise to what is known as the Brentano School (Albertazzi et al. 1996; Fisette & Fréchette 2007). In this chapter, I give a bird’s eye view of the Brentano School from a rather historical perspective. My (...) leading hypothesis is that one crucial factor explaining the rise of the school is Brentano’s unique strategy, within the academic context of the time, to promote the revival of philosophy as a rigorous science. After a brief introduction, I reconstruct the three main phases in the school’s development, namely Brentano’s teaching in Würzburg (1866-73), his teaching in Vienna (1874-95), and Anton Marty’s teaching in Prague (1880-1913). (shrink)

Hume maintained that, philosophically speaking, there is no difference between exiting a room out of the first-floor window and using the door. Nevertheless, Hume’s reason and common sense prevailed over his scepticism and he advocated that we should always use the door. However, we are currently living in a world that is more seriously committed to the Humean philosophy of empiricism than he was himself and thus the potential to act inappropriately is an ever-present potential. In this paper, I explore (...) how Hume’s two versions of causality have detrimentally affected our ability both to arrive at and to use research to improve human well-being. I illustrate my argument with an example of what I think is an incorrect yet supposedly scientifically sound assumption: that absenteeism causes poor school attainment. Instead I make the interdisciplinary argument that absenteeism is better understood as an aggravating symptom of a number of other causes of poor attainment, such as poverty and individual psychological factors. I suggest that an instrumental, punitive policy against parents whose children tend to be absent from school may be ineffectual or even counterproductive if the objective is to improve the well-being of those children. To support my argument, I introduce the critical realist idea of transfactuality. Using the example of research into moon rocks, I show how mainstream science uses transfactuality despite its empiricist aversion to it. I also suggest that it is our honesty, integrity, and stoicism that lead us to the extreme overthrow of reason and common sense that we see today in many of the UK’s social policies; an overthrow that Hume himself did not achieve. Metaphorically speaking, British professionals, stoically and honestly believing in the ability of their trusted research correlations to guide their action, are exiting out of the first-floor window rather than using the door. This is a significant barrier to our ability to devise and implement social policy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Can philosophers come up with persuasive reasons to allow or to ban human reproductive cloning? Yes. Can philosophers agree, locally and temporarily, which practices related to cloning should be condoned and which should be rejected? Some of them can. Can philosophers produce universally convincing arguments for or against different kinds of human cloning? No. This paper analyses some of the main arguments presented by philosophers in the cloning debate, and some of the most important objections against them. The clashes (...) between the schools of thought suggest that philosophers cannot be trusted to provide the public authorities, or the general public, a unified, universally applicable view of the morality of human reproductive cloning. (shrink)

Over recent years there has been a growing movement pushing for the inclusion of Philosophy in schools.[1] As a subject, Philosophy is broad. It can be separated into many sub-disciplines such as Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, and Philosophy of Science, to name a few. These sub-disciplines reduce back to three broad pillars of Philosophy: Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Axiology. Regardless of where one’s philosophical interest sits, the essential skill set remains the same. This is the ability to (...) reason. Philosophers produce rationally convincing arguments and critically assess the arguments of others. In this fictional dialogue Socrates meets with Allison Fells, the Principal of Western Heights School, to discuss the inclusion of Philosophy in the school curriculum. Socrates has been running a successful Philosophy club at school and believes that students would benefit through the extension of the club into the regular school curriculum. Socrates argues that Philosophy equips students with the skill set needed to live the good life. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This article explores the role of principal leadership in creating a thinking school. It contributes to the school leadership literature by exploring the intersection of two important areas of study in education  school leadership and education for thinking  which is a particularly apt area of study, because effective school leadership is crucial if students are to learn to be critical and creative thinkers, yet this connection has not be widely investigated. We describe how (...) one principal, Hinton, turned around an underperforming school by using critical and creative philosophical thinking as the focus for students, staff and parents. Then, drawing on the school leadership literature, the article describes seven attributes of school leadership beginning with four articulated by Leithwood and colleagues (2006) (building vision and setting direction; redesigning the organisation; understanding and developing people; managing the teaching and learning program), and adding three others (influence; self-development; and responding to context). This framework is then used in a case study format in a collaboration between practitioner and researchers to first explore evidence from empirical studies and personal reflection about Hinton’s leadership of Buranda State School, and second to illuminate how these general features of school leadership apply to creating a thinking school. Based on the case study and using the general characteristics of school leadership, a framework for leading a thinking school is described. Because the framework is based on a turnaround school, this framework has wide applicability: to schools that are doing well as an indication of how to implement a contemporary approach to curriculum and pedagogy; and to schools that are underperforming and want a rigorous, high expectation and contemporary way to improve student learning. (shrink)

After the death of Wittgenstein, the center of philosophical attention in England shifted from Cambridge to Oxford under the leadership of Ryle, Austin, Strawson and Grice. Hart, Hampshire, Toulmin, Hare, Nowell-Smith, Berlin and Warnock followed them. And this philosophy developed during the period of the fifties a great development made Oxford the center of the most important philosophy in the world. Oxford philosophy made the study of language the primary subject of philosophical inquiry. This study created a method (...) known as linguistic analysis, which was applied in addressing the problems of philosophy of mind, morals, meaning, linguistic communication, and so on. بعد وفاة ڤتجنشتين ، تحول مركز الاهتمام الفلسفى في إنجلترا من كيمبردج إلى أكسفورد تحت ريادة رايل، وأوستن، وستراوسون، وجرايس. وسار في ركابهم هيرت، وهامبشير، وتولمان، وهير، ونويل- سميث، وبرلين، ووارنوك. وتطورت هذه الفلسفة خلال فترة الخمسينيات تطورا عظيما جعل من أكسفورد مركز الفلسفة الأكثر أهمية في العالم. وجعلت فلسفة أكسفورد من دراسة اللغة الموضوع الأساسي للبحث الفلسفي. واصطنعت لهذه الدراسة منهجا عرف بالتحليل اللغوي، جرى تطبيقه في معالجة مشكلات فلسفة العقل، والأخلاق، و المعنى والتواصل اللغوي، ونحوذلك. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare the methodology of the Austrian school to two alternative methodologies from the economic mainstream: the ‘orthodox’ and revealed preference methodologies. I argue that Austrian school theorists should stop describing themselves as ‘extreme apriorists’ (or writing suggestively to that effect), and should start giving greater acknowledgement to the importance of empirical work within their research program. The motivation for this dialectical shift is threefold: the approach is more faithful to their actual practices, it better (...) illustrates the underlying similarities between the mainstream and Austrian research paradigms, and it provides a philosophical foundation that is much more plausible in itself. (shrink)

This paper makes a case for why philosophy would be beneficial if promoted among the subjects offered to secondary students in Aotearoa New Zealand. Philosophical inquiry in the form of Philosophy for Children (P4C) has made some inroads at the primary level, but currently very few students are offered philosophy as a subject at the secondary level. Philosophy is suited to be offered as a standalone subject and incorporated into the National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA) system. Philosophy has (...) been shown to benefit students in numerous ways, including the development of their critical thinking. Critical thinking is a focus of education around the world, including in the New Zealand Curriculum, and this focus on critical thinking could precipitate a focus on philosophy. (shrink)

In this article, I make a philosophical case for the state to fund religious schools. Ultimately, I shall argue that the state has an obligation to fund and provide oversight of all schools irrespective of their religious or non-religious character. The education of children is in the public interest and therefore the state must assume its responsibility to its future citizens to ensure that they receive a quality education. Still, while both religious schools and the polity have much to (...) be gained from direct funding, I will show that parents and administrators of these schools may have reasons to be diffident toward the state and its hypothetical interference. While the focus of the paper is primarily on the American educational context, the philosophical questions related to state funding and oversight of religious schools transcend any one national context . (shrink)

Following neo-Aristotelians Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum, we claim that humans are story-telling animals who learn from the stories of diverse others. Moral agents use rational emotions, such as compassion which is our focus here, to imaginatively reconstruct others’ thoughts, feelings and goals. In turn, this imaginative reconstruction plays a crucial role in deliberating and discerning how to act. A body of literature has developed in support of the role narrative artworks (i.e. novels and films) can play in allowing us (...) the opportunity to engage imaginatively and sympathetically with diverse characters and scenarios in a safe protected space that is created by the fictional world. By practising what Nussbaum calls a ‘loving attitude’, her version of ethical attention, we can form virtuous habits that lead to phronesis (practical wisdom). In this paper, and taking compassion as an illustrative focus, we examine the ways that students’ moral education might usefully develop from engaging with narrative artworks through Philosophy for Children (P4C), where philosophy is a praxis, conducted in a classroom setting using a Community of Inquiry (CoI). We argue that narrative artworks provide useful stimulus material to engage students, generate student questions, and motivate philosophical dialogue and the formation of good habits which, in turn, supports the argument for philosophy to be taught in schools. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the existence of a Dialectical school proper against criticisms brought forward by Klaus Döring and by Jonathan Barnes. Whereas Döring claims that there was no Dialectical school separate from the Megarians, Barnes takes issue with my claim (argued for in “Dialektiker und frühe Stoiker bei Sextus Empiricus”) that most of the reports in Sextus on the dialecticians refer to members of the Dialectical school. Barnes contends that these dialecticians are in fact Stoic (...) logicians. As against Döring, I argue that the passage in Diogenes Laertius II 113 (first drawn attention to by David Sedley) which talks of a the Megarian Stilpo winning over disciples from the Dialecticians is not refuted by Döring’s arguments. It clearly shows that the Dialecticians and the Megarians at the time were taken to be different philosophical sects. As against Barnes I insist on the differences between the report in Ps.-Galen’s Historia 9 and the Sextan report on the theory of sign in AM VIII. These reports offer incompatible definitions of the indicative sign. Moreover, the classification of simple propositions reported by Sextus at AM VIII 96f. cannot be a truncated version of the (Stoic) list to be found in Diogenes Laertius VII 69f. since in Sextus’ report one of the three classes of simple propositions is labelled middle (meson). This is a certain sign that we are dealing with a triad, and hence that this list is meant to be complete. Therefore the classification found in Sextus and attributed to the dialecticians and the one in Diogenes Laertius reporting Stoic material do come from different sources. (shrink)

How does microbiota research impact our understanding of biological individuality? We summarize the interdisciplinary summer school on "Microbiota, Symbiosis and Individuality: Conceptual and Philosophical Issues" (July 2019), which was supported by a European Research Council starting grant project "Immunity, DEvelopment, and the Microbiota" (IDEM). The summer school centered around interdisciplinary group work on four facets of microbiota research: holobionts, individuality, causation, and human health. The conceptual discussion of cutting-edge empirical research provided new insights into microbiota and highlights (...) the value of incorporating into meetings experts from other disciplines, such as philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that knowledge of philosophical propositions can and should perform a role as regulative ideal in high school philosophy classes. Roughly speaking, I think that there are two kinds of knowledge assumed in high school philosophy classes: the first, which, for convenience, I shall call philosophical dispositional knowledge, and the philosophical propositional knowledge. The first one consists in the knowledge that takes into account only certain philosophical skills such as thesis (...) identification, argument identification etc. The second one involves the guarantee of the truth of a philosophical proposition through justification. I argue that the philosophical dispositional knowledge, although it is a sufficient epistemological presupposition to be assumed for the preparation of high school philosophy classes, it is not necessary. This is because this kind of knowledge does not sufficiently plays a role as the ultimate goal in philosophy classes, if we consider that Philosophy itself, by its authors, has the philosophical propositional knowledge as an ultimate goal. Further, I argue that the first kind of knowledge is properly understood only if it is regulated by the second kind of knowledge ideal. Thus considered, besides the fact that, in this way, we in fact make Philosophy present itself in high school classes, we will have considerable gains for the students’ posture in face of the fundamental philosophical problems. (shrink)

The classical Chinese philosophical tradition (ca. 6th to 3rd centuries BCE) contains rich discussion of skill and expertise. Various texts exalt skilled exemplars (whether historical persons or fictional figures) who guide and inspire those seeking virtuosity within a particular dao (guiding teaching or way of life). These texts share a preoccupation with flourishing, or uncovering and articulating the constituents of an exemplary life. Some core features thought requisite to leading such a life included spontaneity, naturalness, and effortless ease. However, (...) there was also significant disagreement during this ‘Warring States’ or ‘Hundred Schools’ period on which skills were valuable, how one should cultivate them, and who exactly ought to serve as exemplars. In this chapter, I discuss two prominent types of expertise and their attendant skills. The first is expertise at a particular craft, occupation, or dao, which finds its most poignant celebration in the early Daoist anthology Zhuangzi. Interest in crafts or skilled occupations was likely motivated by a perceived (or implied) analogy with living a good life more generally. The second concerns ethical expertise, a prominent and widely held ideal within the Ruist (Confucian) and Mohist schools. Both maintain that ethical expertise consists of an ability to apply past models or precedents to current cases, though they diverge on what those models are and how to properly apply them. The aim is to provide non-specialists an overview of this literature in Daoism, Confucianism, and Mohism, while also providing suggestions about further research. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to investigate the connection between the Frankfurt School and the events of 1968. Accordingly, the paper focuses only on those important members of the School whose philosophical, ideological or practical influence on the events is clearly detectable. This means dealing with four thinkers in three sections: the influence of Adorno and Horkheimer is treated in the same section, whereas the work of Marcuse and Habermas is examined in separate sections. The three (...) sections represent three different approaches. Adorno and Horkheimer are passive onlookers of the events their passivity being rooted in their skeptical philosophical thinking. The initially also passive and pessimist Marcuse slowly rises to the role of the ’prophet’ of the students. And the early Habermas’ critical analysis paves the way for his initially pessimist, but later more optimistic reformist attitude. The paper is structured accordingly: after introductory thoughts, the mentioned thinkers are treated in separate sections that contain historo-philosophical analysis of their relevant works. (shrink)

This anthology focuses on “practical” forms and expressions of knowledge, like thinking through artistic media or by crafting things out of materials. The ten chapters follow and review various tracks in conceptions of contemporary knowledge, exploring human knowledge and experience from the perspective of human activities or practices, professional, artistic, domestic, or whatever. A guiding idea is that human knowledge seldom, perhaps never, fits into the traditional dualism between thinking and doing. -/- The chapters are written by philosophers and musicians (...) – some with a double experience as artists and theoreticians. The themes are philosophical, but above all, they touch on questions that are essential for how we understand ourselves as thinking and playing bodies, indeed as parts of nature. The book does not propose one single “theory of knowledge” but steps towards a more diverse and open attitude to the meaning of knowledge. -/- We hope that the texts will be of interest and useful in both disciplinebased and professional education: in philosophy, art schools, tea cher education, and in other programmes where tacit and practical knowledge are essential for the (future) practitioners. It is possible to independently read, and profit from, most of the chapters. (shrink)

1 Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH, UK.

In this chapter, I elaborate an idealized type of Islamic philosophy of education and epistemology. Next, I examine the crisis that Islamic schools face in Western societies. This will occur on two fronts: (1) an analysis of the relationship (if any) between the philosophy of education, the aspirations of school administration, and the actual character and practice of Islamic schools; and (2) an analysis concerning the meaning of an Islamic curriculum. To the first issue, I argue that there exists (...) a disjuncture between Islamic educational ideals (as expressed by Muslim philosophers of education), the aspirations of school administrators, and the manner in which Islamic schools operate in practice. Concerning the second item, I argue that Islamic schools, notwithstanding their own insistent claims, must struggle to define what an Islamic education entails that is uniquely distinctive to Islamic schools. Finally, I argue that Islamic educators need to encourage open-minded discussions concerning issues on which there is no settled opinion. I illumine this discussion by drawing upon minority Muslim voices that encourage further dialogue and debate. Above all else, this chapter is an attempt to highlight the challenges that Muslim educators in the West face as they aim to reconcile an idealized caricature of Islamic philosophy of education with the on-the-ground needs of Muslim children socialized in a non-Islamic society. (shrink)

In this paper an attempt is made to draw out the contemporary relevance of philosophy in school education of India. It includes some studies done in this field and also reports on philosophy by such agencies like UNESCO & NCERT. Many European countries emphasises on the above said theme. There are lots of work and research done by many philosophers on philosophy for children. Indian values system is different from the West and more important than others. Education has become (...) a tool to achieve efficiency in all walks of human life whether social, political, religious or philosophical. Every nation started developing its own specific set of educational values. For India it is very necessary to increase philosophical thinking study and research. Philosophy could make significant contribution, particularly in relation to children’s moral development because the Indian curriculum currently neglects this aim. A teacher can play an important role in promoting this discussion because a teacher has the capacity to influence students with their thoughts and personality and engages them in these activities. Philosophy needs to be included in the curriculum and have demonstrated cognitive and social gains in children who were explored to philosophy in their schooling. (shrink)

This article explores the question of how the members of the Lvov-Warsaw School promoted values that can be regarded as components of so-called logical culture. The author argues that these values are strictly connected with science. With references to Łukasiewicz, Czeżowski, and Kotarbiński,the article explores how values shape the logical culture and determines society as directed towards values. The article connects the meta-philosophical perspective with the philosophical one.