While civic education may not always be explicitly included in school curriculums, it can still be imparted through various non-teaching practices and in different places. In this article, we will delve into three potential educational spaces -memorials, museums, and libraries- that are commonly found in Western democracies. We will explore the significance and scope of each of these spaces and discuss their respective ethical, political, and aesthetic responsibilities. Additionally, we will examine how they possess agency and can influence the educational (...) process, recognizing that even non-human entities, such as nature itself, can play an important role in shaping our understanding of civic education. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to a better conceptual and practical delimitation of inclusive education. A pedagogy that reacts to the need to face the dilemmas of difference. An interpre...

The ongoing explosion of interest in artificial intelligence is fueled in part by recently developed techniques in machine learning. Those techniques allow automated systems to process huge amounts of data, utilizing mathematical methods that depart from traditional statistical approaches, and resulting in impressive advancements in our ability to make predictions and uncover correlations across a host of interesting domains. But as is now widely discussed, the way that those systems arrive at their outputs is often opaque, even to the experts (...) who design and deploy them. Is it morally problematic to make use of opaque automated methods when making high-stakes decisions, like whether to issue a loan to an applicant, or whether to approve a parole request? Many scholars answer in the affirmative. However, there is no widely accepted explanation for why transparent systems are morally preferable to opaque systems. We argue that the use of automated decision-making systems sometimes violates duties of consideration that are owed by decision-makers to decision-subjects, duties that are both epistemic and practical in character. Violations of that kind generate a weighty consideration against the use of opaque decision systems. In the course of defending our approach, we show that it is able to address three major challenges sometimes leveled against attempts to defend the moral import of transparency in automated decision-making. (shrink)

From the author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, a hugely influential book that challenged key assertions by Niels Bohr and other founders of quantum mechanics, A Guess at the Riddle provides a major metaphysical overhaul of one of physics' most intractable problems-the quest to bridge quantum and classical physics in order to understand the nature of reality.

For Shepherd, how many things exist? On the one hand, it looks like the answer is going to be many. It is a central tent of Shepherd's philosophical system that causation is a relation whereby two or more objects combine to create a third. Since there are many instances of this causal relation, there must be many objects in the world. On the other hand, there are several moments throughout her writing where Shepherd indicates that the distinction between causes and (...) effects is in some sense unreal, and that while the world appears to us to consist of many distinct objects interacting causally, really there is just one thing and its merely nominally distinct parts. I argue that Shepherd is an ontological pluralist, and the texts that appear to express a commitment to ontological monism are best understood as expressing ontological holism instead. (shrink)

In both co-authored and solo-authored work over the past decade, we have developed the idea of “metalinguistic negotiation”. On our view, metalinguistic negotiation is a type of dispute in which speakers appear to use (rather than explicitly mention) a term in conflicting ways to put forward views about how that very term should be used. In this paper, we explore four possible dimensions of variation among metalinguistic negotiations, and the interactions among those dimensions. These types of variation matter for understanding (...) the nature, and the potential range, of the phenomenon of metalinguistic negotiation. As an illustration of the latter, we argue in our concluding section that understanding the full range of forms that metalinguistic negotiations can take has implications for debates about the “implementation” of conceptual engineering proposals. (shrink)

Agency often consists in performing actions and engaging in activities that are successful. We pour glasses, catch objects, carry things, recite poems, and play instruments. It has therefore seemed tempting in recent philosophical thinking to conceptualise the relationship between our agentive abilities and our successes as follows: (Success) S is exercising their ability to ϕ only if S successfully ϕ-s. This paper argues that (Success) is false based on the observation that agency also often consists in making mistakes. We bungle (...) things. We spill water, we miss objects thrown at us, we drop things, misremember lines, and mess up songs. I argue that these mistakes, doings that fall short of being a φ-ing, can only be understood as subpar exercises of the ability to φ. Since this understanding is incompatible with (Success), the thesis should be given up. (shrink)

This article addresses ontological negotiations in the Global South through three case studies of community-based research in Brazil and Ghana. We argue that ontological perspectives of Indigenous and other subjugated communities require an ontological pluralism that recognizes the plurality of both representational tools and ways of being in the world. Locating these two readings of ontological pluralism in the politics of the Global South, the article highlights a wider dynamic from ontological paternalism to ontological diversity to ontological decolonization. We conclude (...) by arguing that this dynamic provides important lessons for reorienting agendas in social ontology through Southern Ontologies. (shrink)

In light of the latest research from cognitive and developmental psychology, this key text explores reasoning, rationality, and democracy, considering the unique nature of each and their relationship to each other. Broadening our understanding from the development of reasoning and rationality in individuals to encompass social considerations of argumentation and democracy, the book connects psychological literature to philosophy, law, political science, and educational policy. Based on psychological research, Moshman sets out a system of deliberative democracy that promotes collaborative reasoning, rational (...) institutions such as science and law, education aimed at the promotion of rationality, and intellectual freedom for all. Also including the biological bases of logic, metacognition, and collaborative reasoning, Moshman argues that, despite systematic flaws in human reasoning, there are reasons for a cautiously optimistic assessment of the potential for human rationality and the prospects for democracy. Reasoning, Argumentation, and Deliberative Democracy will be essential reading for all researchers of thinking and reasoning from psychology, philosophy, and education. (shrink)

As Shavelson et al. (2023) demonstrate with their example of Imani, the lines drawn between permissible and impermissible aid in dying can seem arbitrary, discriminatory, and inconsistent with the...

Against prevailing interpretations, this article contends that Plato's Sophist and Statesman accord the sophist a kind of ‘knowing-how’ (epistêmê). In Soph. 233c10‒d2, the Visitor and Theaetetus agree that the sophist has not truth but a δοξαστικὴ ἐπιστήμη. This phrase cannot mean ‘a seeming knowledge’, for –ικός adjectives formed from verbs express the ability to perform the action denoted by the verb—here, δοξάζω. Although not a first-order, subject-area knowledge, sophistry is a second-order knowledge of how to form and use judgements (doxai). (...) Other acknowledgements of the sophist's epistêmê and the ascription to him of τέχνη, ‘craft/expertise’, confirm that the Visitor's conclusion is not to be dismissed as irony. To critics who argue from the Gorgias and from other works that Plato must consider the Visitor's conclusion an error, the author replies: 1) other dialogues do not control the Visitor dialogues; 2) the Visitor does not validly demonstrate that the sophist lacks all knowledge; 3) by admitting sensibles into Being, the Visitor and Theaetetus allow the objects of epistêmê to include things in the embodied world, even likenesses. Non-philosophers’ epistêmê in the Visitor dialogues is not implicated in the difficulties that critics have raised about epistemology in the so-called Two Worlds dialogues. On this new ontology, even the sophist, if guided by philosophical rulers, can benefit citizens by employing his elenctic expertise as Socrates did, aiding their growth toward virtue. (shrink)

The papers in this volume can be roughly divided between?the philosophy of mind? and?the philosophy of language?. They are, however, united by the idea that this standard philosophical classification stands in the way of clear thinking about many of the core issues. With this, they are united by the idea that the notion of a human being must be central to any philosophical discussion of issues in this area, and by an insistence on an inescapably ethical dimension of any adequate (...) discussion of these issues. None of the papers is well described as?exegetical?, but most of them are, in one way or another, papers about Wittgenstein, and all of them are discussions of themes central to his later work and strongly influenced by it. While the debt to Wittgenstein is enormous, many of the papers involve significant criticisms of ideas widely drawn from him, and some of these criticisms may have application to Wittgenstein himself.00David Cockburn Is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at University of Wales, Trinity St David. He is the author of books on philosophy of mind and philosophy of time, and of papers on Wittgenstein, philosophy of mind, time, religion, language and ethics. (shrink)

Dilthey’s moral writings have received scant attention over the years, perhaps due to his apparent tendency toward relativism. This essay offers a unified look at Dilthey’s moral writings in the context of his Kantian-styled “Critique of Historical Reason.” I present the Dilthey of the moral writings as an observer of reason in the spirit of Kant, watching practical reason devolve into error when it applies itself beyond the bounds of possible experience. Drawing on moral writings from across Dilthey’s corpus, I (...) retrace Dilthey’s argument that moral theories from Kantianism and utilitarianism to natural law theory suffer significant motivational problems because of the way they transcend the “synthesis” of moral perception. Dilthey’s argument suggests that abstract moral theory is always bound to seem unmotivating and unreal from the standpoint of lived experience, and perhaps that, to avoid this, moral philosophy should confine itself to more situated, case-specific judgments. (shrink)

The recent philosophical literature on emotional action is divided between Humeans, who think that emotional action, for all its peculiarities, can in fact be explained along Humean lines, that is, with belief–desire pairs; and emotionists, who think that emotional actions can only be explained by appealing to emotions and some of their special features. After reviewing this philosophical discussion, I will argue, first, that none of the philosophical accounts of emotional action analysed, whether Humean or emotionist, is satisfactory enough. Second, (...) I will argue that this philosophical debate has reached a stalemate, which does not allow further progress and which has not been able to provide us with a compelling account of such emotional actions where it is not obvious which is the goal involved. Third, I will argue that in order to overcome this stalemate, we need to approach emotional action in a radically different way. Drawing on ideas from some psychologists, I will suggest that the relevant philosophical issue should be whether emotional action is, or is not, goal-directed. Finally, I will suggest how emotional actions, particularly the most puzzling ones, can be accounted for according to this new approach. (shrink)

We demonstrate that many philosophers accept the following claim: When an aesthetic object is apprehended correctly, taking pleasure in said object is a reliable sign that the object is aesthetically successful. We undermine this position by showing that what grounds our pleasurable experience is opaque: In many cases, the experienced pleasure is attributable to factors that have little to do with the aesthetic object. The evidence appealed to is a form of Higher-Order Evidence (HOE) and we consider attempts to overcome (...) said evidence. We argue they are unsuccessful. We conclude by considering what this means for our practice of making aesthetic judgements. (shrink)

In this chapter, important transcultural and multi-civilizational foundations for a comprehensive philosophy of cosmic life are presented from a systematic and at the same time historical perspective. An “anacrusis” regarding the origin of the philosophical term ‘cosmic life’ is followed by systematic groundwork in relation to Gotthard Günther’s concepts of poly-contexturality and trans-classical science. These are extended and complemented by the views of other thinkers. Against this background, the new term ‘panenbiotism’ (“all-in-life-doctrine”) is introduced. Like ‘cosmic life,’ this term is (...) then used as the basis for a transcultural comparative discussion of positions from ancient Hellenic and Chinese contexts, from South and West Asia, and from Europe. This discussion is organized in the form of three main sections which correspond to three basic themes concerning ‘cosmic life.’ Each of these is developed along the trajectories of related subtopics. In this sense, the first main section presents several views from various times and places in the context of which (cosmic) life is seen as an expressed principle of incessant self-(re)creation through metabolism and partial self-consumption. In the second main section, the transcultural comparative angle is applied to multiple perspectives and variations on the theme of cosmic life as an integral feature of a vast or infinite universe. Finally, the third main section presents family-resemblant views of cosmic life as an integral aspect of cosmic ‘light.’ This last section also links the discussion with some unorthodox and very innovative hypotheses of our time. The main thesis of this chapter is that a future philosophy of cosmic life must draw on a variety of philosophical traditions from different civilizations and, in a spirit of unrestricted openness, translate the ultimate inexhaustibility of all scientific endeavors into a more productive intellectual reality within the expanded scope of a new kind of trans-classical concept of science. (shrink)

Chater & Loewenstein thoughtfully express their disillusionment with contemporary applied behavioral science, particularly as it pertains to public policy. Although they fault an overemphasis on i-frame approaches, their proposed alternatives leave doubt regarding whether behavioral science has much, if anything, useful to offer policy. We offer two critical principles to guide and motivate more relevant behavioral science.

The term “climate emergency” was employed in the 2008 book Climate Code Red as both a problem statement and a solutions strategy. The core propositions – that the biophysical circumstances were worse than generally understood, that the 2°C goal was dangerously high, and that the time for incremental change had expired – are re-examined in light of events over the last decade and the growing existential risk. The failure to recognise and respond to the climate emergency, and the incapacity of (...) markets to do so, means that widespread social, economic, and physical disruption is now inevitable. An emergency mode of response, characterised by decisive state leadership and market intervention which challenges the dominant economic paradigm, is now necessary to protect contemporary civilisation. (shrink)

"Cet ouvrage propose de souligner le passage de l’être à la lettre en mettant l’accent sur la rupture avec l’ontologie. Il décrit le mouvement allant de l’un à l’autre dans une sorte de « séparation liante » (AHN, p. 185) qui n’implique guère de reniement – ni d’un côté ni de l’autre. Il ne propose pas de synthèse, mais une autre distribution d’accents. Dans un premier temps, l’auteur s’interroge : cette façon de penser conduit-elle Levinas « hors du champ de (...) la philosophie »? Puis il met Levinas « à l’épreuve de l’autre », en le confrontant – toujours à partir de la perspective judaïque – à des auteurs tel que Rosenzweig sur les questions de l’éducation, Meschonnic sur la modalité du sacré, Blanchot sur l’être Juif, Janicaud au sujet du tournant théologique qu’il aurait imprimé à la phénoménologie, ou encore Benny Lévy sur l’attachement marqué de Levinas au « grec », à savoir à la philosophie. Toutefois, l’originalité de l’ouvrage réside dans la comparaison à des auteurs beaucoup moins connus dans notre espace européen : à Leibovitz pour lequel le judaïsme est une « religion revendicative », assignant l’humain aux commandements ; à Israël Salanter – fondateur du Moussar à Kovno, en Lituanie ; au rav Soloveitchik sur la question de la halakha. Mais aussi à un penseur étonnant et tonique, Daniel Epstein qui nous a livré, en hébreu, une présentation magistrale, précise et en nuances."-- page 4 de couverture. (shrink)

In the Fray collects David Gushee's most significant essays over twenty years as a Christian intellectual. Most of the essays were written in situations of ethical conflict on the highly contested ground of Christian public ethics. Topics addressed include torture, climate change, marriage and divorce, the treatment of gays and lesbians in the church, war, genocide, nuclear weapons, race, global poverty, faith and politics, Israel/Palestine, and even whether Christian ethics is a real academic discipline. Quite visible in the collection (...) is Gushee's deep research interest in the Nazi era in Germany and how the churches fared in resisting Nazi intimidations and seductions and, finally, the Holocaust. All essays reflect the desire for a church that has learned the lessons of that period--a church with resistance to racism, militarism, nationalism, and other social-ideological toxins, and with the discernment and courage to resist these in favor of a courageous allegiance to the lordship of Christ at the time of testing. Considerable attention is directed to contesting some of the public ethics found in the author's own US evangelical Christian community. Concluding reflections on Gushee's ethical vision are offered in an illuminating essay by senior Christian ethicist Glen Harold Stassen. (shrink)

In Of Effacement, David Marriott endeavors to demolish established opinion about what Blackness is and reorient our understanding of what it is not in art, philosophy, autobiography, literary theory, political theory, and psychoanalysis. With the critical rigor and polemical bravura which he displayed in Whither Fanon? Marriott here considers the relationships between language, judgement and effacement, and shows how effacement has become the dominant force in anti-Blackness. Both skeptically and emphatically, Marriott presents a series of radical philosophical engagements with (...) Fanon's "is not" (n'est pas) and its "Black" political truth. How does one speak - let alone represent - that which is without existence? Is Blackness n'est pas because it has yet to be thought as Blackness? And if so, when Fanon writes of Blackness, that it is n'est pas (is not), where should one look to make sense of this n'est pas? In Of Effacement, Marriott anchors these questions by addressing the most fundamental perennial questions concerning the nature of freedom, resistance, mastery, life and liberation, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Huey Newton, Nietzsche, Malcolm X, Edward Said, Georges Bataille, Stuart Hall, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a reading of Blackness by recasting its effacement as an identity, while insisting on it as a fundamental question for philosophy. (shrink)

Can you succeed without being a terrible person? We often think not: recognizing that, as the old saying has it, "nice guys finish last." But does that mean you have to go to the other extreme and be a bully or Machiavellian to get anything done? In The Art of Fairness, bestselling author David Bodanis uses thrilling case studies to show there's a better path, leading neatly in between. He reveals how it was fairness, applied with skill, that led (...) to the speedy development of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, to construction ofthe Empire State Building to be constructed in barely a year, and to a quiet English debutante becoming an acclaimed jungle guerrilla fighter in World War II. In ten vivid profiles featuring pilots, filmmakers, baseball managers, and more, we see that the path to greatness doesn't require crushing displays of power or tyrannical ego. Simple fair decency can prevail. (shrink)

The Moral Equality Account of Hypocrisy (ME) is a prominent theory of why hypocrites lack moral standing to blame. Hypocrites make exceptions for themselves and thereby implicitly deny moral equality, which is an essential premise of moral standing to blame. ME has recently faced challenges from philosophers who deny that it is the hypocrite’s rejection of moral equality that causes her to lose moral standing to blame. I have distinguished three main challenges which I discuss and rebut in this article: (...) “The Internal Blame and Blame of Fictional Characters Challenge”, which I attribute to Todd ( 2019 ), and “The Hypercrite Challenge” and “The Inegalitarian Norm Challenge”, which are due to Lippert-Rasmussen ( 2021 ). The article begins by offering an account of ME. It fills in a few gaps in the theory, by explaining why it is necessary for a blamer to invoke a special right to blame and by determining the type of right that standing to blame is. It also distinguishes between the question of why hypocrisy is wrong or bad, and the question of why it undermines moral standing to blame. I hold that several theories provide plausible answers to the first question, but only ME has so far given a good answer to the second question. When distinguishing properly between these two questions, we see that ME can respond satisfactorily to the three challenges. (shrink)

This article argues that the Phaedo is written as a new sort of story of how a hero faces death; this story provides an alternative to existing tragedy, as understood by Plato. The opening of the Phaedo makes clear that two features that Plato closely associates with tragedy, pity and lamentation, are inappropriate responses to Socrates’ impending death, and that tuchē (chance) did not affect his happiness. This is the first step in the dialogue’s sustained engagement with tragedy. Tragedy for (...) Plato falls under the category of stories about heroes and gods. Plato wrote the Phaedo so that we would see Socrates as a philosophical hero, a replacement for traditional heroes such as Theseus or Heracles. I argue that in fact the Phaedo meets every requirement in Republic Books 2–3 for how to tell stories about heroes and gods and so belongs to the same broad category as tragedy. Within this framework, it tells its new story of how the true hero faces death. (shrink)