Jigsaw lessons, initially developed in the 1970s by Elliot Aronson for elementary schools in the wake of desegregation, are perfect for active learning in philosophy classrooms, fostering collaboration and interdependence. This essay describes how to use jigsaw lessons in philosophy classrooms and presents, as an example, instructions and materials for a jigsaw lesson for translation using identity in first-order logic.

Elliot R. Wolfson is Professor of Religious Studies and the Marsha and Jay Glazer Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Elliot Eisner has spent the last 40 years researching, thinking and writing about some of the key and enduring issues in Arts Education, Curriculum Studies and Qualitative Research. He has contributed over 20 books and 500 articles to the field. In this book, Professor Eisner has compiled a career-long collection of his finest pieces-extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings and major theoretical contributions-so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Starting with a specially written (...) Introduction, which gives an overview of Professor Eisner's career and contextualizes his selection, the chapters cover a wide range of issues, including: · Children and art · The use of educational connoisseurship · Aesthetic modes of knowing · Absolutism and relativism in curriculum theory · Education reform and the ecology of schooling · The future of education research This is a must-have book for anyone wishing to know more about the development of Arts Education, Curriculum Studies and Qualitative Research over the last four decades, and about Elliot Eisner's contribution to these exciting fields. This book is part of the World Library of Educationalists series, which celebrates the contributions made to education by leading figures. Each scholar has selected his or her own key writings from across numerous books and journal articles, and often spread across two or more decades to be presented in a single volume. Through these books, readers can chase up the themes and strands that have been lodged in a lifetime's work, and so follow the development of these scholars' contributions to the field, as well as the development of the fields themselves. Other scholars included in the series: Richard Aldrich, Stephen J. Ball, John Elliott, Howard Gardner, John Gilbert, Ivor F. Goodson, David Hargreaves, David Labaree, E.C. Wragg, John White. (shrink)

Some considerations are urgent and others are not. Sometimes we invite criticism if we neglect the urgency of our situation, even if our action seems adequate to respond to it. Despite this significance, the literature does not offer a satisfactory analysis of the normative structure of urgency. I examine three views of urgency, drawn from philosophical and adjacent literature, which fail to explain the distinctive criticism we face when we neglect the urgency of our reasons. Instead I argue that urgent (...) considerations pre-empt our deliberation about less urgent considerations. Urgency, then, is a meta-normative phenomenon, setting standards for how we handle and respond to first-order considerations, requiring that we close deliberation. In the face of urgency, appropriate action is not enough: commitment is called for. This is how we enact appreciation of our practical reasons, independently of our carrying out the action they call for. (shrink)

Are Hegel and Nietzsche philosophical opposites? Can twentieth-century Continental philosophers be categorized as either Hegelians or Nietzscheans? In this book Elliot Jurist places Hegel and Nietzsche in conversation with each other, reassessing their relationship in a way that affirms its complexity. Jurist examines Hegel's and Nietzsche's claim that philosophy and culture are linked and explicates the various meanings of "culture" in their work--in particular, the contrast both thinkers draw between ancient and modern culture. He evaluates their positions on the (...) failure of modern culture and on the need to develop conceptions of satisfied agency. It is Jurist's original contribution to focus on the psychological sensibility that informs the project of both philosophers. Writing in an admirably clear style, he traces the ongoing legacy of Hegel's and Nietzsche's thought in Adorno, Habermas, Honneth, Jessica Benjamin, Heidegger, Derrida, Lacan, and Butler. (shrink)

Children are not simply molded by the environment; through constant inference and interpretation, they actively shape their own social world. This book is about that process. Elliot Turiel's work focuses on the development of moral judgment in children and adolescents and, more generally, on their evolving understanding of the conventions of social systems. His research suggests that social judgements are ordered, systematic, subtly discriminative, and related to behavior. His theory of the ways in which children generate social knowledge through (...) their social experiences will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and students in child development and education. (shrink)

Faking Nature explores the arguments surrounding the concept of ecological restoration. This is a crucial process in the modern world and is central to companies' environmental policy; whether areas restored after ecological destruction are less valuable than before the damage took place. Elliot discusses the pros and cons of the argument and examines the role of humans in the natural world. This volume is a timely and provocative analysis of the simultaneous destruction and restoration of the natural world and (...) the ethics related to those processes, in an era of accelerated environmental damage and repair. (shrink)

I argue that God’s holiness as conceived in Hebrew Scripture grounds human obligations to obey divine commands. To disobey the commands of a holy God would disrespect a basic good, which we have decisive reason to avoid doing. God’s holiness may be a somewhat obscure property––though I propose transcendence and perfect morality as necessary conditions––but His omniscience and perfect morality guarantee that He would not command human beings to do things that His holiness would not ground His authority to command. (...) I conclude by replying to objections. (shrink)

This article proposes that predicate order and coherence relations are the two major determining factors in copredication licensing, resolving a long-standing puzzle over the criteria for constructing acceptable copredications. The effects of predicate ordering are claimed to be anchored around semantic complexity, such that copredications with semantically Simple–Complex predicate orderings are more acceptable than the reverse. This motivates a parsing bias, termed Incremental Semantic Complexity. Particular ways of implementing this parsing bias are discussed. The effect of predicate coherence is claimed (...) to be anchored around a sense of causality and featural commonality. Lastly, a hierarchy of possible copredications is outlined (the Copredication Hierarchy), helping to delimit the modelling of copredications to a greater extent than has previously been possible. (shrink)

Condorcet's classical Enlightenment statement of human progress became an essential element of nineteenth- and twentieth-century consciousness, but by the millennium grand narratives had fallen victim to a disillusioned cultural climate. Now Steven Pinker, like Condorcet drawing on a wide range of contemporary “knowledges,” has reasserted a sweeping narrative of human progress in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Mapping a spectacular long-term decline in person-on-person violence and reduction in deaths due to war, Pinker celebrates the spread (...) of a cultural pattern of self-restraint, sensitivity to human suffering, and recent regard for human rights, due to the modern state and gentle commerce capitalism.For Pinker the human condition has gotten steadily better, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible. Why then are so many so negative about modernity? Citing the psychology of temporal proximity to horrific events and the bad-news predilection of the media, Pinker ignores the specifically modern and less directly brutal institutionalized forms of violence as well as the profound ambivalence of progress. He decisively demonstrates the drop in certain kinds of violence, but his account becomes strangely ideological, recapitulating key Cold-War themes—the individual against totalitarianism, the Enlightenment against the counter-Enlightenment, rationalism and freedom against murderous utopianism—distorting his study in the name of gentle commerce, Marxism, and anti-Communism. (shrink)

In “A Confutation of Convergent Realism,” Larry Laudan presents the realist with these fascinating challenges:What,then,of realism itself as a ‘scientific’ hypothesis?…If realism has made some novel predictions or been subjected to carefully controlled tests, one does not learn about it from the literature of contemporary realism. (1981, p. 46.)He then goes on to say:No proponent of realism has sought to show that realism satisfies those stringent empirical demands which the realist himself minimally insists on when appraising scientific theories. (1981, p. (...) 46)Not only do I fully endorse what Laudan says in these passages, I think it is time to take him up on these challenges.Laudan’s position has been that scientific progress can be explained without having to appeal to verisimilitude. Instead, we explain the success of a scientific theory in terms of its subjugation to the cannons of experimental controls: those theories that have been put through proper testing during the course of their formulation are the ones that are most likely to be reliable. (1984, pp. 96-101). (shrink)

The author argues that Plato’s “proof” that happiness follows justice has a fatal flaw – because the philosopher king in Plato’s Republic is itself a counter example.

Descartes is widely portrayed as the arch proponent of “the epistemological transparency of thought” (or simply, “Transparency”). The most promising version of this view—Transparency-through-Introspection—says that introspecting (i.e., inwardly attending to) a thought guarantees certain knowledge of that thought. But Descartes rejects this view and provides numerous counterexamples to it. I argue that, instead, Descartes’s theory of self-knowledge is just an application of his general theory of knowledge. According to his general theory, certain knowledge is acquired only through clear and distinct (...) intellection. Thus, in his view, certain knowledge of one’s thoughts is acquired only through clear and distinct intellection of one’s thoughts. Introspection is a form of intellection and it can be clear and distinct. Ordinarily, however, introspection isn’t clear and distinct but is instead confused with dubitable perceptions of bodies. To make introspection clear and distinct, we need to “sharply separate” it from all perceptions of bodies by doubting all perceptions of bodies. Without such radical doubt, introspection remains confused and we lack certain knowledge not just of the specific features of our thoughts, but even of the minimal claim that a thought exists. Far from being the high priest of Transparency, Descartes is radically opposed to it. (shrink)

Drawing on a qualitative study of women who cared for their elderly mothers, this article explores women's experiences of feeling responsible for elderly relatives. The minimal provision of public services for old people and the relative absence of brothers and husbands from family caregiving emerge as material constraints shaping women's sense of obligation. This is affirmed by ideologies and assumptions about women's association with caring and family ties that permeate subjects' accounts of their situations. Translating their sense of obligation into (...) their lives is a contradictory process characterized by ambivalence and guilt that stifle complaint. Further exploration of the social processes that sustain the inequitable division of caring labor can contribute to interpretations, practices, and policies that benefit rather than constrain women. (shrink)

The election of Donald Trump has exposed American society’s profound crisis of hope. By 2016 a generation of shrinking employment, rising inequality, the attack on public education, and the shredding of the social safety net, had set the stage for stunning insurgencies at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Against this dire background, Ronald Aronson offers an answer. He argues for a unique conception of social hope, one with the power for understanding and acting upon the present situation. Hope, (...) he argues, is far more than a mood or feeling—it is the very basis of social will and political action. It is this kind of hope that Aronson sees brewing in the supporters of Bernie Sanders, who advocated the tough-minded and inspired disposition to act collectively to make the world more equal, more democratic, more peaceful, and more just. And it was directly contrasted by Trump’s supporters who showed a cynical and nostalgic faith in an authoritarian strongman replete with bigotry and misogyny. Beneath today’s crisis Aronson examines our heartbreaking story: a century of catastrophic violence and the bewildering ambiguity of progress—all of which have contributed to the evaporation of social hope. As he shows, we are now in a time when hope is increasingly privatized, when—despite all the ways we are connected to each other—we are desperately alone, struggling to weather the maelstrom around us, demoralized by the cynicism that permeates our culture and politics, and burdened with finding personal solutions to social problems. Yet, Aronson argues, even at a time when false hopes are rife, social hope still persists. Carefully exploring what we mean when we say we “hope” and teasing hope apart from its dangerously misconstrued sibling, “progress,” he locates seeds of real change. He argues that always underlying our experience—even if we completely ignore it—is the fact of our social belonging, and that this can be reactivated into a powerful collective force, an active we. He looks to various political movements, from the massive collective force of environmentalists to the movements around Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, as powerful examples of socially energized, politically determined, and actionably engaged forms of hope. Even in this age of Donald Trump, the result is an illuminating and inspiring call that anyone can clearly hear: we can still create a better future for everyone, but only if we resist false hopes and act together. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze George Gaylord Simpson's response to the molecularization of evolutionary biology from his unique perspective as a paleontologist. I do so by exploring his views on early attempts to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships among primates using molecular data. Particular attention is paid to Simpson's role in the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as his concerns about the rise of molecular biology as a powerful discipline and world-view in the 1960s. I argue that Simpson's (...) belief in the supremacy of natural selection as the primary driving force of evolution, as well as his view that biology was a historical science that seeks ultimate causes and highlights contingency, prevented him from acknowledging that the study of molecular evolution was an inherently valuable part of the life sciences. (shrink)

Demonstrating the practical relevance and import of many historically significant philosophers , Critical Thinking Unleashed presents a practical, non-technical, and comprehensive approach to critical thinking. In contrast to other treatments of practical reasoning, Elliot D. Cohen not only teaches students how to identify and refute irrational premises_he also teaches them how to construct rational antidotes to combat the personal, social, and political obstacles they confront in everyday life.

Are mysticism and morality compatible or at odds with one another? If mystical experience embraces a form of non-dual consciousness, then in such a state of mind, the regulative dichotomy so basic to ethical discretion would seemingly be transcended and the very foundation for ethical decisions undermined. Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral as it is expressed in the particular tradition of Jewish mysticism known as the (...) Kabbalah. The particular themes discussed include the denigration of the non-Jew as the ontic other in kabbalistic anthropology and the eschatological crossing of that boundary anticipated in the instituition of religious conversion; the overcoming of the distinction between good and evil in the mystical experience of the underlying unity of all things; divine suffering and the ideal of spiritual poverty as the foundation for transmoral ethics and hypernomian lawfulness. (shrink)

Contents: Ethical principals for environmental protection / Robert Goodin -- Political representation for future generations / Gregory S. Kavka and Virginia L. Warren -- On the survival of humanity / Jan Narveson -- On deep versus shallow theories of environmental pollution / C.A. Hooker -- Preservation of wilderness and the good life / Janna L. Thompson -- The rights of the nonhuman world / Mary Anne Warren -- Are values in nature subjective or objective? / Holmes Rolston III - Duties (...) concerning islands / Mary Midgley -- Gaia and the forms of life / Stephen R.L. Clark -- Western traditions and environmental ethics / Robin Attfield -- Traditional American Indian and traditional western European attitudes toward nature / J. Baird Callicott -- Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action / Richard Routley. [Book Synopsis]. (shrink)

Environmentalists express concern at the destruction/exploitation of areas of the natural environment because they believe that those areas are of intrinsic value. An emerging response is to argue that natural areas may have their value restored by means of the techniques of environmental engineering. It is then claimed that the concern of environmentalists is irrational, merely emotional or even straightforwardly selfish. This essay argues that there is a dimension of value attaching to the natural environment which cannot be restored no (...) matter how technologically proficient environmental engineers become. The argument involves highlighting and discussing analogies between faking art and faking nature. The pivot of the argument is the claim that genesis is a significant determinant of an area's value. (shrink)

Until now it has been impossible to read the full story of the relationship between Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Their dramatic rupture at the height of the Cold War, like that conflict itself, demanded those caught in its wake to take sides rather than to appreciate its tragic complexity. Now, using newly available sources, Ronald Aronson offers the first book-length account of the twentieth century's most famous friendship and its end. Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre first met in (...) 1943, during the German occupation of France. The two became fast friends. Intellectual as well as political allies, they grew famous overnight after Paris was liberated. As playwrights, novelists, philosophers, journalists, and editors, the two seemed to be everywhere and in command of every medium in post-war France. East-West tensions would put a strain on their friendship, however, as they evolved in opposing directions and began to disagree over philosophy, the responsibilities of intellectuals, and what sorts of political changes were necessary or possible. As Camus, then Sartre adopted the mantle of public spokesperson for his side, a historic showdown seemed inevitable. Sartre embraced violence as a path to change and Camus sharply opposed it, leading to a bitter and very public falling out in 1952. They never spoke again, although they continued to disagree, in code, until Camus's death in 1960. In a remarkably nuanced and balanced account, Aronson chronicles this riveting story while demonstrating how Camus and Sartre developed first in connection with and then against each other, each keeping the other in his sights long after their break. Combining biography and intellectual history, philosophical and political passion, _Camus and Sartre_ will fascinate anyone interested in these great writers or the world-historical issues that tore them apart. (shrink)

This entry provides a substantive overview of research and debates concerning creativity in philosophy and related fields. Topics covered include definitions of creativity, whether creativity can be learned, whether it can be explained, attempts to explain creativity in cognitive science, and whether computer programs or AI systems can be creative.

Through an extensive examination of the conceptions of social justice that may be ascribed validly to Karl Marx's political thougtht, Elliot R. Pruzan analyzes the apparent conflict between Marx as value-neutral social scientist and as revolutionary. He suggests a resolution to this conflict through a carefully constructed presentation of Marx's theory of human nature and the ethical presuppositions of that theory. In so doing, Pruzan identifies those elements of Marx's political thought that warrant our continued serious consideration of it (...) as a genuine theory of politics, especially when compared with other more traditionally conceived forms of political thought. (shrink)

It has been argued by some that the present non-existence of future persons entails that whatever obligations we have towards them are not based on rights which they have or might come to have. This view is refuted. It is argued that the present non-existence of future persons is no impediment to the attribution of rights to them. It is also argued that, even if the present non-existence of future persons were an impediment to the attribution of rights to them, (...) the rights they will have when they come into existence constitute a constraint on present actions. Both arguments build on a suggestion of Joel Feinberg's. Next, three arguments are considered which, while they do not highlight the non-existence issue, are related to it. The view that the causal dependence, of (some) future people on present policies, erodes or weakens the claim that rights considerations should constrain our present actions concerning them, is considered and rejected. The view that future people can only have rights to what is available at the time at which these people come into existence is considered and rejected. So too is the view that the attribution of rights to future people involves, in virtue of resource scarcity, an unacceptable arbitrariness. (shrink)

Language has been argued to arise, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically, from specific patterns of brain wiring. We argue that it can further be shown that core features of language processing emerge from particular phasal and cross-frequency coupling properties of neural oscillations; what has been referred to as the language ‘oscillome’. It is expected that basic aspects of the language oscillome result from genetic guidance, what we will here call the language ‘oscillogenome’, for which we will put forward a list of (...) candidate genes. We have considered genes for altered brain rhythmicity in conditions involving language deficits: autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, specific language impairment and dyslexia. These selected genes map on to aspects of brain function, particularly on to neurotransmitter function. We stress that caution should be adopted in the construction of any oscillogenome, given the range of potential roles particular localized frequency bands have in cognition. Our aim is to propose a set of genome-to-language linking hypotheses that, given testing, would grant explanatory power to brain rhythms with respect to language processing and evolution. (shrink)

In October and November, 1948, an exchange on democracy between Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus appeared in Jean Daniel's monthly Caliban. At first glance these articles confirm the prevailing sense that the 1952 split was inevitable. But reading the break back into the relationship presents it with a kind of necessity, corresponding to the law of "analysis after the event" described by Doris Lessing. Inasmuch as it resulted in a break, we are tempted to focus from the start on "the (...) laws of dissolution" of the relationship. As in a marriage that ends in divorce, afterwards we fixate on the logic of the breakup, as if the two were bound to fall out and that is all that matters. But the Sartre/Camus story was in reality too open-ended and complex for such a onesided reading of the story. The events of the year before these articles give us a very different sense of the relationship. (shrink)

Growing up in the shadow of the women's movement dramatically influences how young women think about their life course transitions. Although prior research has examined the objective markers of adulthood, we know little about how young women themselves perceive these markers. This article examines the subjective meanings of the transition to adulthood among 42 young women who were part of the Youth Development Study. While interviewees saw becoming a parent and becoming financially independent as reflecting an adult orientation, completing schooling (...) was tied to class-differentiated views of growing up. In addition, respondents did not see beginning full-time work and getting married as associated with growing up. Three key themes emerged as young women discussed their lives: independence/self-reliance, self-development, and uncertainty. These themes suggest that young women are partially “living feminism” as they make the transition to adulthood. (shrink)