Throughout the critical period Kant enigmatically insists that reason is a ‘unity’, thereby suggesting that both our theoretical and practical endeavors are grounded in one and the same rational capacity. How Kant's unity thesis ought to be interpreted and whether it can be substantiated remain sources of controversy in the literature. According to the strong reading of this claim, reason is a ‘unity’ because all our reasoning, including our theoretical reasoning, functions practically. Although several prominent commentators endorse this view, it (...) is widely thought to lack exegetical support. This paper seeks to strengthen the case for this reading by showing how theoretical reason's positive function, as Kant presents it in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, may be construed as fundamentally practical. I argue that reason's supreme regulative principle ought to be understood as a categorical practical imperative. This interpretation, I suggest, resolves the apparent inconsistencies that blight Kant's account of the principle in the Appendix, while bringing greater overall coherence to his account of theoretical reason's regulative function. (shrink)

Within the framework of Positive Psychology and Needing Theories, this article reviews cultural practices or perceptions regarding what happiness is and how it can be achieved. Mainly research on Subjective Well-Being (SWB) has identified many cultural differences in the pursuit of happiness, often described as East-West splits along categories such as highly expressed affect vs. quiet affect, self-assertion vs. conformity to social norms, independence vs. interdependence and the like. However, it is the overall goal of this article to show that (...) whatever the normative content of a culture’s or subculture’s view of happiness may be, it involves the same basic psychological needs beyond how people may choose to report or express resulting emotions. In particular, the theory of happiness proposed by the Hellenistic philosopher Epicurus provides broader, more inclusive categories and concepts which can be used to explain and possibly harmonize assumptions from particular traditions. (shrink)

Ectogenesis, or “artificial womb technology,” has been heralded by some, such as prominent feminist Shulamith Firestone, as a way to liberate women. In this chapter, we challenge this view by offering an alternative analysis of the technology as relying upon and perpetuating a problematic model of pregnancy which, rather than liberating women, serves to devalue them. We look to metaphysics as the abstract study of reality to elucidate how the entities in a pregnancy are related to one another. We consider (...) two models of the metaphysics of pregnancy: (1) the Parthood Model, whereby the fetus is a part of what/who gestates it; and (2) and the Fetal Container Model, whereby the gestator is a container for the fetus. We suggest that under the assumption of the Fetal Container Model, we are more likely to think that any container will suffice for gestation, even an artificial one. In contrast, under the assumption of the Parthood Model, we are less likely to treat the gestator as interchangeable or replaceable, given the parthood relationship between gestator and fetus. This chapter argues that ectogenesis is conceptually linked to the Fetal Container Model and advocates a more cautious approach in promoting ectogenesis as a tool for women’s liberation. (shrink)

This chapter presents a task-based lesson sequence based on Judith Butler's Gender Trouble. Gender Trouble is a great piece of philosophical literature. However, as philosophical literature is a genre rarely found in EFL teaching, this chapter first demonstrates in detail the merits of this genre for the teaching ofEnglish for Academic Purposes. After a brief analysis of the source text, which deconstructs the entire sex-gender link and presents both sex and gender as free-floating, this chapter presents task-based methodology and how (...) it is utilized in a lesson aimed at building gender awareness and acceptance. In the target task students are asked to take the role of an ethics teacher at an Irish high school, in which the discussion arose whether the school should introduce unisex toilets and changing rooms in order to not discriminate against transsexual students. Tue study of Butler's philosophy will provide students with both the knowledge and language to accomplish this task. Open follow-up discussions often lead to powerful ethical insights in the context of gender, homo- and transsexuality. (shrink)

This article presents a detailed methodological outline for teaching culture through project work. It is argued that because project work makes it possible to gain transferrable and applicable knowledge and insight, it is the ideal tool for teaching culture with the aim of achieving real intercultural communicative competence (ICC). Preceding the pedagogical presentation, the term culture is conceptualized as small-c culture/deep culture, that is, as the sociopsychological programming of a given community. This concept is developed with practical examples and conceptualizations (...) for pedagogical implementability. Finally, a project course with American undergraduate students conducted in Germany is briefly presented. This presentation includes project sheets, the methodological rationale of each project, and the observations the participants made during the course. These observations include many aspects of the way German and U.S. American deep culture differ and also shed light on the “truth” behind some German cultural clichés. (shrink)

Neuroeducation as an amalgamation of neuroscience, cognitive science and educational psychology has the explicit aim of improving classroom teaching and learning and has repeatedly stressed the role of the teacher in student motivation and learning. This article briefly reviews the nature of human learning from the perspective of neuroeducation and presents four factors of successful learning as a consequence of this line of research. These four factors relate to the credibility of the teacher, individual differences, the role of a positive (...) classroom climate and the activation of previous knowledge. (shrink)

Los desacuerdos acerca de la ontología científica han sido frecuentemente reconstruidos como el resultado de una disputa entre stances epistémicas rivales. En el presente trabajo, (i) caracterizamos algunos de estos desacuerdos como desacuerdos profundos. Además, (ii) mostramos que los desacuerdos profundos sobre ontología científica pueden surgir no solo de la adopción de diferentes stances epistémicas, sino entre posiciones que se encuadran dentro de una misma stance. El desarrollo de ese punto nos permite, a su vez, establecer una distinción entre tipos (...) de desacuerdos profundos y explorar la posibilidad de que existan diferencias de grado entre ellos. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) calls for medical practitioners to “integrate” our best available evidence into clinical practice. A significant amount of the literature on EBM takes this integration to be unproblematic, focusing on questions like how to interpret evidence and engage with patient values, rather than critically looking at how these features of EBM can be implemented together. Other authors have also commented on this gap in the literature, for example, identifying the lack of clarity about how patient preferences and evidence (...) from trials is supposed to be integrated in practice. In this paper, I look at this issue from an epistemological perspective, (looking at how different types of knowledge in EBM can be used to make sounds judgements). In particular, I introduce an epistemological issue for this integration problem, which I call the epistemic integration problem. This is essentially the problem of how we can use information that is both general (eg, about a population sample) and descriptive (eg, about what expected outcomes are) to reach clinical judgements that are individualized (applying to a particular patient) and normative (about what is best for their health). (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was a philosopher and novelist who wrote extensively on the themes of love, goodness, religion, and morality. In this article, we explore her notion of ‘moral vision’; the idea that morality is not just about how we act and make choices, but how we see the world in a much broader sense.

For philosophy to criticize the concept of reality requires self-criticism. Throughout history many thinkers that have systematized a critique of both reality and philosophy. In this article we will analyze the Kantian and Hegelian systems by showing the failure in their respective critique to exercise sufficient self-criticism, resulting in unfinished critiques. Going a step further, Tanabe’s proposal was to plunge philosophy into a kind of «absolute disruption» that would drive thought beyond itself by means of an absolute critique in which (...) being and nothingness are seen to interpenetrate each other, thus opening up the possibility of positing absolute nothingness as «a foundation that is not a foundation.». (shrink)

This paper brings Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach to Sasha Waltz’s dance film S, which focuses on the relation between sexuality and language. Maintaining that movement in cinema takes place in the viewers and not the film, the paper considers how the visual can be deepened to include the ways we move and are moved. Saussure’s insights into language are brought to the sensible, which is here understood in terms of divergences from norms. Though film would seem to privilege vision, viewing (...) this film helps to elucidate Merleau-Ponty’s claim that a film succeeds when it engages the viewer’s embodied understanding, and shifts the norms of the corporeal schema. (shrink)

Kant’s view of human beings is, as much of his philosophy, notoriously based on the dichotomy between the phenomenal and the noumenal world. This dichotomy digs a rift across human nature by separating the animal and the rational parts of it, their heteronomous and autonomous components, their sense of duty and their self-love. Human beings, for Kant, inhabit both worlds. On the one hand, even if we agree with Kant that the fundamental moral norms are constitutive of our rational and (...) autonomous agency and therefore inescapable, it remains unclear whether and how far these norms can motivate finite and heteronomous human beings, normally concerned with their own ends, interests and inclinations. On the other hand, although moral actions may express who we really are as rational beings, they may nonetheless leave us with an unfulfilled but legitimate need to reconcile morality with our own ends as finite, animal beings, inevitably concerned with living our own lives. Sasha Mudd described these phenomena as two forms of alienation: moral alienation (the estrangement of the heteronomous agent, motivated by happiness and inclinations, from a morality perceived as alien, foreign, and hardly motivating) and practical alienation (the estrangement of the autonomous moral agent from her empirical and heteronomous dimension – her projects, desires, aspirations, inclinations, and so on). On Mudd’s account, Kant successfully escape the first kind of alienation through his doctrine of respect. Here I argue, contra Mudd, that there are at least two ways in which Kant leaves moral agents alienated from morality itself. (shrink)