Jerome Popp's monograph is a part of the SUNY series in philosophy and biology, and accordingly is narrowly focused upon discussion of an evolutionary model of value theory. As Popp explains at the outset, Daniel Dennett—among others—has proposed that any naturalized moral theory must provide a naturalized account for its own existence. Popp's thesis for this work is that, in conjunction with his longoverlooked insight into the significance of Darwin's thought to the area of epistemology generally, Dewey solved this philosophic (...) problem long ago. This emphasis upon reconciling Dewey's work with Dennett's thought is reiterated in Popp's conclusion that "It is remarkable how Dewey's use of evolution in his arguments .. (shrink)

Curiously, while the efficacy of the arts for the development of multicultural understandings has long been theorized, empirical studies of this effect have been lacking. This essay recounts our combined empirical and philosophical study of this issue. We explicate the philosophical considerations that shaped the development of the arts course we studied, which was grounded in rather traditional humanist educational thought, informed by Deweyan considerations for pedagogy and multiculturalism. We also provide an overview of the course and of the study (...) design: the ways in which the course worked to teach aesthetic theory through a combination of popular and canonical works, and the ways in which it sought to instill a sense of cross-cultural appreciation and solidarity among students through the inclusion of art from different cultures and generations. We then share our research findings and our return to the realm of philosophy to interpret them. Our postcolonial analysis incorporates emerging discussions of the arts as a tool for resistance and dialogue within the system of public education, and revisit and reconsider the very concept of education for pluralistic democracy. This approach problematizes traditional conceptions of pluralism, in which an attempt is made to dissolve difference in a common understanding, and instead advocates that works from among the contemporary popular arts and works drawn from the artistic “canon” alike must be considered and employed for their instrumental value to the educational process—especially for their ability to prompt an intersubjectivity that is accompanied by a heightened awareness of difference. (shrink)

A blue-ribbon panel convened by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) concluded in 2010 that teacher education in the United States must be “turned upside down,” with practical experience at its center and academic content woven around the practical. It might seem that the new clinical model based on medical education, which has been adopted by eight states, would be well-aligned with a Deweyan inquiry-based pedagogy. Dewey himself recognized a paradox, however: preparation for the combination of rigor (...) and flexibility needed for inquiry-based pedagogical skills absolutely requires immersion in clinical settings, even as immersion in the teaching environment that prevails in U.S. public schools systematically socializes new teachers to a very different set of skills than those needed for this model of effective pedagogy. Recent scholarship by Kuhnian scholars provides practical guidance for an alternative understanding of how changes in practice occur and may be transmitted to future generations. (shrink)

In his landmark work, Democracy and Education, John Dewey (1916/1980) proposed that "democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience" (93). Given this, he argued, the role of the system of public education in a democracy must not only facilitate individual development, but do so in a way that simultaneously attends to the larger social good. Preparation for vocation was central to this effort, understood not as narrow technical (...) training, but rather as "such a direction of life activities as renders them perceptibly significant to a person, because of the consequences they accomplish, and also useful to his associates" (316). The threat .. (shrink)

This is a book about Aristotle's philosophy of language, interpreted in a framework that provides a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and science. The aim of the book is to explicate the description of meaning contained in De Interpretatione and to show the relevance of that theory of meaning to much of the rest of Aristotle's philosophy. In the process Deborah Modrak reveals how that theory of meaning has been much maligned. This is a major (...) reassessment of an underestimated aspect of Aristotle that will be of particular interest to classical philosophers, classicists and historians of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

L'A. presenta un'analisi della Lettera sull'anima, in cui Avicenna affronta il tema delle idee di esseri fittizi, come la fenice, ed in particolare la permanenza di tali idee nell'anima dopo la sua separazione dal corpo. Nella parte centrale dello studio l'A. esamina il rapporto fra la risposta avicenniana al problema ed alcuni elementi dottrinali caratterizzanti il pensiero del filosofo: il tema degli universali, della quidditas, o natura comune, e la distinzione fra essenza ed esistenza.

Since the idea of forbidden knowledge is rooted in the biblical story of Adam and Eve eating from the forbidden tree of knowledge, its meaning today, in particular as a metaphor for scientific knowledge, is not so obvious. We can and should ask questions about the autonomy of science.

We argue that the common attribution to Zhuangzi of both perspectivalism or relativism on the one hand, and scepticism on the other is fundamentally mistaken. While granting that it is reasonable to construe Zhuangzi as offering a perspectiva! position on judgement, we argue that Zhuangzi's perspectivalism does not commit him to a relativist position on truth or to scepticism about human knowledge. Rather, we maintain that Zhuangzi's attacks on the concepts of truth and knowledge are better seen as his articulation (...) of a species of epistemological nihilism which rejects, as ultimately meaningless, the concepts of truth, reality, and knowledge. (shrink)

How kids play in virtual worlds, how it matters for their offline lives, and what this means for designing educational opportunities.

Since the advent of the women's movement, women have made unprecedented gains in almost every field, from politics to the professions. Paradoxically, doctors and mental health professionals have also seen a staggering increase in the numbers of young women suffering from an epidemic of depression, eating disorders, and other physical and psychological problems. In The Cost of Competence, authors Brett Silverstein and Deborah Perlick argue that rather than simply labeling individual women as, say, anorexic or depressed, it is time (...) to look harder at the widespread prejudices within our society and child-rearing practices that lead thousands of young women to equate thinness with competence and success, and femininity with failure. They argue that continuing to treat depression, anxiety, anorexia and bulimia as separate disorders in young women can, in many cases, be a misguided approach since they are really part of a single syndrome. Furthermore, their fascinating research into the lives of forty prominent women from Elizabeth I to Eleanor Roosevelt show that these symptoms have been disrupting the lives of bright, ambitious women not for decades, but for centuries. Drawing on all the latest findings, rare historical research, cross-cultural comparisons, and their own study of over 2,000 contemporary women attending high schools and colleges, the authors present powerful new evidence to support the existence of a syndrome they call anxious somatic depression. Their investigation shows that the first symptoms usually surface in adolescence, most often in young women who aspire to excel academically and professionally. Many of the affected women grew up feeling that their parents valued sons over daughters. They identified intellectually with their successful fathers, not with their traditional homemaker mothers. Disordered eating is one way of rejecting the feminine bodies they perceive as barriers to achievement and recognition. Silverstein and Perlick uncover medical descriptions matching their diagnosis in Hippocratic texts from the fourth century B.C., in anthropological studies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and in case studies of many noted psychologists and psychiatrists, including the "hysteric" patients Freud used to develop his theories on psychoanalysis. They have also discovered that statistics on disordered eating, depression, and a host of other symptoms soared in eras in which women's opportunities grew--particularly the 1920s, when record numbers of women entered college and the workforce, the boyish silhouette of the flapper became the feminine ideal, and anorexia became epidemic, and again from the 1970s to the present day. The authors show that identifying this devastating syndrome is a first step toward its prevention and cure. The Cost of Competence presents an urgent message to parents, educators, policymakers, and the medical community on the crucial importance of providing young women with equal opportunity, and equal respect. (shrink)

In this paper I use the concept of forbidden knowledge to explore questions about putting limits on science. Science has generally been understood to seek and produce objective truth, and this understanding of science has grounded its claim to freedom of inquiry. What happens to decision making about science when this claim to objective, disinterested truth is rejected? There are two changes that must be made to update the idea of forbidden knowledge for modern science. The first is to shift (...) from presuming that decisions to constrain or even forbid knowledge can be made from a position of omniscience (perfect knowledge) to recognizing that such decisions made by human beings are made from a position of limited or partial knowledge. The second is to reject the idea that knowledge is objective and disinterested and accept that knowledge (even scientific knowledge) is interested. In particular, choices about what knowledge gets created are normative, value choices. When these two changes are made to the idea of forbidden knowledge, questions about limiting or forbidding lines of inquiry are shown to distract attention from the more important matters of who makes and how decisions are made about what knowledge is produced. Much more attention should be focused on choosing directions in science, and as this is done, the matter of whether constraints should be placed on science will fall into place. (shrink)

Our aim is to put into consideration the topics of “semantics”, “types”, “lifeworld” and “intersubjectivity” following the social theories of Alfred Schutz and Niklas Luhmann. First of all, and inversely to Luhmann’s perspective which receives the schutzian theory comparing equal types and semantics, we will show that types are inherent to subjectivity. Secondly, and consequently, we state that the social systems theory in the analysis of the “lifeworld”, does not pay attention to the past character of its constitution. Last, but (...) not least, we will point out that all these aspects are framed in a critique of the phenomenological notion of intersubjectivity, which from the luhmannian point of view, ignores the autonomy of consciousness, as well as the emergent character of the social. (shrink)

This chapter examines the emergence of a distinctively analytic approach to film as art. I begin with an overview of Berys Gaut’s claim that the philosophy of film art is, roughly speaking, organized around three levels of analysis: the film medium; film narrative and aesthetics; and philosophical themes that emerge in films. Next I trace the emergence of an analytic philosophy of film as art in the work of Alexander Sesonske and Francis Sparshott. Sesonske and Sparshott each draw attention to (...) the central features of film aesthetics—notably to the ways in which film treats time and space. I conclude by discussing contemporary developments such as “film as philosophy.”. (shrink)

This article examines a series of Greek myths which establish a structural equivalence between two motifs, stoning and blinding; the two penalties either substitute for one another in alternative versions of a single story, or appear in sequence as repayments in kind. After reviewing other theories concerning the motives behind blinding and lapidation, I argue that both punishments-together with petrifaction and live imprisonment, which frequently figure alongside the other motifs-are directed against individuals whose crimes generate pollution. This miasma affects not (...) only the perpetrator of the deed, but risks spreading to the community at large, and prompts measures aimed at containing the source of the disease. Both blinding and lapidation are designed to cordon off the contaminant by removing him from all visual and tactile contact with other men. But it is not only the nature of the crimes that explains the kinship between the two penalties. I further argue that the attributes Greek thinking assigned to stones, repeatedly characterized as unseeing, mute, immobile, and dry, and symbolic of the condition of the dead, elucidate the connections and clarify the antagonism that myth suggests between lapidation and sight. Stoning, blinding, imprisonment, and petrifaction all consign the criminal to an existence exactly parallel to that of the stone, stripping him of the properties that distinguish the living from the dead, and making him both unseeing and unseen. Three examples drawn from archaic and classical literature provide examples of these interactions between stones, blindness, invisibility, and death: the snake portent sent by Zeus in Book 2 of the Iliad, the Perseus myth, and Hermes' activity in both the Homeric Hymn to Hermes and Aeschylus' Choephoroe. (shrink)

For Plato, the crucial function of human cognition is to grasp truths. Explaining how we are able to do this is fundamental to understanding our cognitive powers. Plato addresses this topic from several different angles. In the Cratylus and Theaetetus, he attempts to identify the elemental cognitions that are the foundations of language and knowledge. He considers several candidates for this role, most notably, perception and simple meaning-bearing concepts. In the first section, we will look at Plato’s worries about semantic (...) instability and its epistemic consequences. The central role of basic cognitions in Plato’s account of knowledge in the Theaetetus will be explored in the second section. In the final section, the relevance of Plato’s conception of cognition to modern discussions in the philosophy of language and epistemology will be noted. (shrink)

Por mucho tiempo, las teorías del mestizaje han sido utilizadas para analizar e interpretar la hibridez de las identidades y culturas latinoamericanas, pero el mestizaje –al igual que sus críticas– no es un concepto adecuado en el caso de los espacios sociales, culturales y políticos que ocupan en los Estados Unidos las comunidades latinas y sus producciones musicales. A través del análisis de las profundas líneas de falla que existen en la intersección de los conceptos latinoamericanos de mestizaje y los (...) conceptos bipolares estadounidenses sobre raza e identidad racial, este ensayo dilucida el impacto concreto y material que estas discrepancias conceptuales tienen en las comunidades latinas estadounidenses y en sus prácticas musicales. (shrink)

The externality of the inside: body images of pregnancyThis paper draws on literature, empirical data and a range of theoretical perspectives on the maternal body to examine understandings of the relationship between a pregnant woman and her foetus, with a particular focus on the body images used by women to represent this relationship. Psychoanalytic and nursing accounts of the relationship between mother and foetus have often described a symbiotic ‘oneness’ or unity during pregnancy. Such accounts, however, stress the temporary nature (...) of this unity and identify a series of ‘stages’ of separation or ‘polarisation’ between mother and foetus during pregnancy. In contrast, many of the 25 women who participated in our interview study of new motherhood described a confusion of the boundary between self and foetus. For many women the experience of pregnancy and the relationship with the unborn baby was ambiguous and uncertain. Importantly, none of these women described her relationship with the foetus as a series of developmental stages, but rather saw it as fluctuating throughout pregnancy. These findings are more consistent with the work of feminist theorists who describe pregnancy as a dynamic and fluid merging of the inside and the outside of the body/self. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Socratic Dialogues Phaedo Republic Timaeus Theaetetus Sophist Philebus Seventh Letter and Definitions Overview Note.

The topic of equality comes up in a variety of contexts in Aristotle’s Politics from Book II to VII. The desire for equality with equals and superiority to inferiors seems to play an important explanatory role for Aristotle in determining the characteristics of the constitution of a state and being a significant causal factor in constitutional change. He distinguishes between types of equality, numerical and proportional, and equality relative to some interest and unqualified equality. Aristotle appeals to his conception of (...) equality in his explanation of the nature and types of democracy and oligarchy in the differentiation of the three types of good constitutions—monarchy, aristocracy and polity—and their less than ideal counterparts—tyranny, oligarchy and democracy—as well as in his analysis of political stability and constitutional change. Despite the complexity of his conception of equality and its political importance, Aristotle’s detailed descriptions of actual constitutions and constitutional changes seldom mention equality. How the desire for equality is explanatory or which type of equality is realized in a specific constitution is left to the reader to determine. The goal of this paper is to discover whether a coherent account of equality can be extracted, on Aristotle’s behalf, from what he does say. In the first two sections, we will look at the role equality plays in Aristotle’s descriptions of actual constitutions in Politics IV and V. The third section will examine the role equality plays in his design of an ideal constitution in Politics VII and VIII. We will conclude by summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of Aristotle’s approach to equality. (shrink)

In most other nations, insurance for medical care is called sickness insurance, and it covers sick people. In the United States, we have “health insurance,” and its major carriers — commercial insurers, large employers, and increasingly government programs — strive to avoid sick people and cover only the healthy. This perverse logic at the heart of the American health insurance system is the key to reform debates.Focusing on sick people versus healthy people might seem a strange way to view the (...) coverage issue. Most discussions of insurance categorize people into other groupings: the insured versus the uninsured; Caucasian whites versus other racial and ethnic groups; men versus women; poor and low-income people versus everybody else; children, adults, and the elderly; or citizens versus immigrants and undocumented aliens. More recently, health researchers have begun talking about “vulnerable populations,” using most of the same demographic groupings and adding other illness-inducing factors such as social isolation, stress, and impoverished neighborhoods. But as I will show, insurance plans now use premiums, cost-sharing, and other design features in ways that indirectly divide each of these groups into the sick and the healthy, to the detriment of the sick. By shifting the costs of illness onto people who use medical care — that is, sick people — market-oriented reforms of the last few decades have eroded insurance in the name of strengthening it. (shrink)