This volume makes a philosophical contribution to the application of neuroscience in education. It frames neuroscience research in novel ways around educational conceptualizing and practices, while also taking a critical look at conceptual problems in neuroeducation and at the economic reasons driving the mind-brain education movement. It offers alternative approaches for situating neuroscience in educational research and practice, including non-reductionist models drawing from Dewey and phenomenological philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. The volume gathers together an international bevy of (...) leading philosophers of education who are in a unique position to contribute conceptually rich and theoretically framed insight on these new developments. The essays form an emerging dialogue to be used within philosophy of education as well as neuroeducation, educational psychology, teacher education and curriculum studies. (shrink)

The paper develops a conceptual framework for understanding the work of ethical remembrance in the classroom. Using David Hansen’s recent example of using Sebald’s novels in his classroom to do the work or remembrance, the paper argues that the effect of Sebald’s novels is best understood using Walter Benjamin’s figure of the angel of history. That figure indicates a view of history that goes beyond the progression of everyday time, to one called remembrance. The paper suggests that the work of (...) mourning effects such remembrance, but simultaneously points to hope through the emergence of weak messianic power. (shrink)

In the following paper, I connect Levinas’s notions of il y a and hypostasis to nature as alterity via Sallis’s interpretation of nature in its return. I interpret Levinas’s idea of the elemental as an unpossessable milieu, an excess with indirect traces, indicating alterity, something strange. I then turn to Levinas’s idea of the ruin of representation to argue for a contextual reversal in which meaning arises from the non-human other. This reversal uncovers the possibility of understanding non-human things as (...) existents, sites where nature in its return reveals the need for respect of the other—an ethical Sinngebung. (shrink)

Over the last decades, education has shifted more clearly to a learner-centered understanding, including particularly constructivism, leaving little room conceptually for a substantive role for the teacher. This article develops a Levinasian framework for understanding the teacher as other. It begins by exploring the spatial metaphors of Levinas’s idea of the teacher as transcendent but shifts to Levinas’s idea of time as instants (durations) that come to the ego as a gift from the future. The article employs these temporal metaphors (...) to understand better the transcendence of the teacher. (shrink)

In this essay Clarence Joldersma explores radical constructivism through the work of its most well-known advocate, Ernst von Glasersfeld, who combines a sophisticated philosophical discussion of knowledge and truth with educational practices. Joldersma uses Joseph Rouse's work in philosophy of science to criticize the antirealism inherent in radical constructivism, emphasizing that Rouse's Heideggerian critique differs from the standard realist defense of modernist epistemology. Next, Joldersma develops an alternative conception of truth, in terms of disclosure, based on Lambert Zuidervaart's work (...) in aesthetics. Joldersma concludes by arguing that this notion of truth avoids the pitfalls of both realism and antirealism, giving educational theorists a way forward to accept some of the major insights of constructivism with respect to learning and teaching without having to relinquish a robust notion of truth. (shrink)

Education is interpreted as something basic to our humanity. As part of our primordial way of being human, education is intrinsic to the understanding’s functioning. At the same time education involves an originary ethical relation to the other, unsettling the self-directed character of the striving to live. And because of its social setting, the call of many others, education orients one to the social, to the call of justice.

Philosophers of education often focus their critique on issues such as neoliberalism, consumerism, pluralism, and so on, and they typically turn for solutions to what we might call the political: democracy, the public, cosmopolitanism, dissent. These critiques and solutions remain firmly connected to what Heidegger calls “the world,” and this worldly analysis seemingly hovers above earthly issues of the environment and ecology. In this article, Clarence Joldersma employs Martin Heidegger's distinction between earth and world, drawing on Kelly Oliver's interpretation (...) of it, to “ecologize” philosophy of education by arguing that that earth “juts” into the world. Philosophy of education needs a Derridean supplement, something that makes up for a lack, but that, in filling the lack, simultaneously supplants it. Joldersma invites philosophy of education to supplement its worldly principles with an “earth ethics” that is characterized by three features. First, this ethics lets the earth and earthlings be, recognizing their continuing mystery as beings. Second, it acknowledges gratefulness toward the earth, an indebtedness to the earth for the reliable support it provides to our worldly projects and concerns. Third, it recognizes earth's fundamental fragility, that its seeming worldly dependability conceals an earthly vulnerability. Joldersma concludes that these three features, in tandem, give rise to an earthly ethics of responsibility. Philosophy of education needs an earth ethics to supplement, if not supplant, its worldly principles. (shrink)

This paper argues for an alternative notion of spirituality for education, based on Theo de Boer’s idea of a spirituality of the desert. Rather than depicting an inner, additional region named the spiritual, spirituality here is thought of as a discourse that depicts the everyday world in a particular way. In dialogue with David Purpel’s analysis, the paper argues for a notion of spirituality that is located in an ongoing oscillation between ‘the individual’ and ‘the community.’ This oscillation turns out (...) to be the call of justice. This analysis helps understand classroom dynamics differently, providing a place of critique for current practices. (shrink)

Citizenship and its education is again gaining importance in many countries. This paper uses England as its primary example to develop a Habermasian perspective on this issue. The statutory requirements for citizenship education in England imply that significant attention be given to the moral and social development of the learner over time, to the active engagement of the learner in community and to the knowledge skills and understanding necessary for political action. This paper sets out a theoretical framework that offers (...) a perspective on learning suitable for these far-reaching aims. We argue that schools need to shift from the currently dominant discourse of accountability to incorporate a discourse of care in order to make room for an effective and appropriate pedagogy for citizenship. Habermas’s social theory gives us a theoretical framework that properly locates schools within the lifeworld as part of civil society. Schools should therefore attend to hermeneutical and emancipatory concerns, not only to strategic interests. We put these in the context of Habermas’s social theory to paint an alternative vision learning for citizenship education which is based in developing the dispositions, values and attitudes necessary for lifelong learning with a view to developing ongoing communicative action. (shrink)

This book explores aspects of William H. Poteat's philosophical anthropology, which proposes a post-critical alternative to the prevailing dualistic conception of the person and opens a path to recovery of the pre-reflective ontological ground of the person where our personhood can be recovered and re-appropriated.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This article evaluates the oversight of drugs and medical devices by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration using an integration of public policy, law, and bioethics approaches and employing multiple assessment criteria, including economic, social, safety, and technological. Throughout, assessments employing both the multiple criteria and a method of expert elicitation are combined with the existing literature, case law, and regulations providing an integrative historical case study approach. The goal is to provide useful information from multiple disciplines and perspectives to (...) guide discussions regarding appropriate oversight frameworks for nanobiotechnology applications under the FDA’s purview. (shrink)

This book explores aspects of William H. Poteat's philosophical anthropology, which proposes a post-critical alternative to the prevailing dualistic conception of the person and opens a path to recovery of the pre-reflective ontological ground of the person where our personhood can be recovered and re-appropriated.

Conspiracy theories (CTs) are widespread ways by which people make sense of unsettling or disturbing cultural events. Belief in CTs is often connected to problematic consequences, such as decreased engagement with conventional political action or even political extremism, so understanding the psychological and social qualities of CTs belief is important. CTs have often been understood to be “monological”, displaying the tendency for belief in one conspiracy theory to be correlated with belief in (many) others. Explanations of monologicality invoke a nomothetical (...) or “closed” mindset whereby mutually supporting beliefs based on mistrust of official explanations are used to interpret public events as conspiracies, independent of the facts about those events (which they may ignore or deny). But research on monologicality offers little discussion of the content of monological beliefs and reasoning from the standpoint of the CT believers. This is due in part to the “access problem” (Wood & Douglas, 2015): CT believers are averse to being researched because they often distrust researchers and what they appear to represent. We used several strategies to address the access problem, and investigated the symbolic resources underlying CTs by reconstructing a conspiracy worldview - a set of beliefs held by CT believers about important dimensions of ontology, epistemology, and human agency. To do this, we analysed media documents, conducted field observation, and engaged in semi-structured interviews,. We describe six main dimensions of a conspiracy worldview: Views of the nature of reality, the self, the outgroup, the ingroup, action, and the future. We also describe a typology of five types of CT believers, which vary according to their positions on each of these dimensions. Our findings converge with prior explorations of CT beliefs but also revealed novel aspects: A sense of community among CT believers, a highly differentiated representation of the outgroup, a personal journey of conversion, variegated kinds of political action, and optimistic belief in future change. These findings are at odds with the typical image of monological CT believers as paranoid, cynical, anomic and irrational. For many, the CT worldview may rather constitute the ideological underpinning of a nascent pre-figurative social movement. (shrink)

The essays in this volume have been selected for their contribution to Everett W. Hall's mature philosophical position, which was grounded in careful linguistic analysis and directed toward philosophically clarifying the major areas of culture. He emerges as skillful, meticulous, and patient in his exploration of language as a means of interpreting the categorial structure of the world. Originally published in 1964. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make (...) available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value. (shrink)

How To Think Philosophically invites reflection on curiosity, wonder, and inquiry. Part I explains philosophy as a way of developing the disciplines and intellectual virtues for seeing and inhabiting the world. Part II introduces the domains of philosophical thinking: epistemology (how we know), metaphysics (what we know), and ethics (how to live).

In 1277, Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, drafted the famous Condemnation of 219 articles in theology and natural philosophy. This Condemnation was a reaction against a group of theologians, led by Siger of Brabant, who were accused of holding that truths of reason could contradict those of revelation. Writing before the Condemnation, which impugned reason's autonomy, Thomas Aquinas critiqued Siger and his followers, and argued that reason could never generate truths that contradict revelation. As a consequence, Aquinas sometimes dwells on (...) reason's limits, terming our knowledge of God 'equivocal' or 'analogical'. Sitting on the other side of the Condemnation, around the turn of the fourteenth century, John Duns Scotus was concerned to secure for reason a portion of its lost dignity. Accordingly, he explores what we can know of God, and lays claim to 'univocal' knowledge of him. Some scholars hold that Scotus's claim to univocal knowledge of God puts him at odds with Aquinas. In this dissertation, I argue that this is not the case, that this apparent discord is largely the result of their different enterprises rather than their basic beliefs about our natural knowledge of God, that Scotus's discussion of univocity is targeted not at Aquinas, but rather at Henry of Ghent---the leading light of the University of Paris at the time that Scotus studied there---and that Scotus does not believe that our knowledge of God is univocal in a strong sense, such that he would claim that it is wholly accurate. Rather, Scotus believes that, in this life, our knowledge of God must comprise abstract concepts that can never do justice to their source. This being the case, he has more in common with Aquinas than some would allow. (shrink)