This chapter contains sections titled: A Socialist Project for Public Education? Interpreting Gramscian Thought in the Brazilian Context: Trends and Tribulations Final Considerations Notes References.

In the history of Brazilian education, it is only since the 1980s, during the redemocratization of Brazil, that proposals for public education in a socialist perspective have been presented. The past two decades have been marked by a growing interest in Gramscian thought, mainly in the educational field, making possible the elaboration of proposals for public school organization in Brazil. However, intellectuals and pedagogues in Brazil have confused the Gramscian ‘unitary school’ with what is known in Brazil as the ‘polytechnical (...) school’, a vague idea of education which is attributed to Marx and taken up by Lenin in the course of the Soviet Revolution. The two conceptions of education differ because of the varying historical contexts in which Marx, Lenin and Gramsci lived and developed their thinking on the roles of State and school. These fundamental differences have been overlooked during the diffusion of Gramscian thought in Brazil, causing confusion in the understanding of the ‘unitary school’ and the ‘polytechnical school’. (shrink)

There is no set Δ of probability axioms that meets the following three desiderata: (1) Δ is vindicated by a Dutch book theorem; (2) Δ does not imply regularity (and thus allows, among other things, updating by conditionalization); (3) Δ constrains the conditional probability q(·,z) even when the unconditional probability p(z) (=q(z,T)) equals 0. This has significant consequences for Bayesian epistemology, some of which are discussed.

Feminist ethics -- Necessity and the evasion of responsibility -- Relational personhood and the violence of war -- Intention matters -- From evading to expanding responsibility -- Taking responsibility for harmdoing in war -- Just war and just peace.

Since our visual perception of physical things essentially involves our identifying objects by their colours, any theory of visual perception must contain some account of the colours of things. The central problem with colour has to do with relating our normal, everyday colour perceptions to what science, i.e. physics, teaches us about physical objects and their qualities. Although we perceive colours as categorical surface properties of things, colour perceptions are explained by introducing physical properties like reflectance profiles or dispositions to (...) cause certain experiences in normal human perceivers. Hence, it seems as if colours as they are experienced by us have no place in the physical world, because they are fundamentally different from the properties which we ascribe to physical objects in scientific accounts of colour perceptions. This special issue on perspectives on colour perception presents new suggestions to solve to this major problem. (shrink)

Bayesian psychology, in what is perhaps its most familiar version, is incomplete: Jeffrey conditionalization is not a complete account of rational belief change. Jeffrey conditionalization is sensitive to the order in which the evidence arrives. This order effect can be so pronounced as to call for a belief adjustment that cannot be understood as an assimilation of incoming evidence by Jeffrey's rule. Hartry Field's reparameterization of Jeffrey's rule avoids the order effect but fails as an account of how new evidence (...) should be assimilated. (shrink)

Cost-benefit analysis is commonly understood to be intimately connected with utilitarianism and incompatible with other moral theories, particularly those that focus on deontological concepts such as rights. We reject this claim and argue that cost-benefit analysis can take moral rights as well as other non-utilitarian moral considerations into account in a systematic manner. We discuss three ways of doing this, and claim that two of them (output filters and input filters) can account for a wide range of rights-based moral theories, (...) including the absolute notions of moral rights proposed by Hayek, Mayo, Nozick, and Shue. We also discuss whether the use of output filters and input filters can be generalized to cover other non-utilitarian theories, such as Kantian duty ethics and virtue ethics. (shrink)

Rosemary Hennessy confronts some of the impasses in materialist feminist work on rethinking `woman' as a discursively constructed subject. She argues for a theory of discourse as ideology taking into account the work of Kristeva, Foucault and Laclau.

In this book, I discuss the question whether God exists, not as a Tillichian religious symbol, but as an actual person, albeit a person who is very different from you and me. My procedure is to examine arguments bdth for and against God's existence qua person and to assess their relative merits. I shall try to show that there is more evidence that God exists than that he does not. This position is, of course, rejected nowadays, even by most religious (...) thinkers, who hold, for one reason or another, that evidence has nothing to do with religious belief, properly understood. My reply to these thinkers is simply to ask them to examine what follows. A useful companion to Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, and the Appendix of this book would be Alvin Plantinga's The Nature of Necessity.l Though I avoid technical terminology wherever possible, those chapters presuppose an elementary understanding of 'possible worlds' discourse; and a clear and concise explanation of that terminology can be found in Chapter IV of Plantinga's book. Also, I use 'logical' throughout to mean what Plantinga means by 'broadly logical' on page 2 of The Nature of Necessity. (shrink)

At no time in the past century have there been fiercer battles over our public schools than there are now. Parents and educational reformers are challenging not only the mission, content, and structure of mass compulsory schooling but also its underlying premise—that the values promoted through public education are neutral and therefore acceptable to any reasonable person. In this important book, Rosemary Salomone sets aside the ideological and inflammatory rhetoric that surrounds today’s debates over educational values and family choice. (...) She offers instead a fair-minded examination of education for democratic citizenship in a society that values freedom of conscience and religious pluralism. And she proposes a balanced course of action that redefines but does not sever the relationship between education and the state. Salomone demonstrates how contemporary conflicts are the product of past educational and social movements. She lays bare some of the myths that support the current government monopoly over education and reveals how it privileges those of economic means. Through a detailed case study of recent controversy in a suburban New York school district, the author explores the legal and policy issues that arise when widely disparate world views stand in the way of political compromise on educational materials, techniques, and programs. Salomone builds a case for educational governance that places the developmental needs of the child at the center of family autonomy. She advances a plan that respects diverse values and visions of schooling while preserving the core commitments that bind our nation. (shrink)

The rise of the concept of education to the leading category of modernity initially appears as a life-world equivalent to the settings of subject philosophy and concentrates on the expansion of one's own self- and world reference. With the problematization of subject-philosophical thinking, there are corresponding shifts in meaning in the concept of education: its changes can be understood as an examination of this origin. Based on the writings of Humboldt, Hegel and Novalis, Rosemarie Boenicke shows how responsiveness and reciprocity (...) are increasingly becoming an issue and how these shifts determine the current development of the concept of education. (shrink)

Können unsere Gefühle uns Gründe dafür liefern, etwas für wahr zu halten und zu tun? Verfügen wir über bestimmte Werte und moralische Überzeugungen vielleicht sogar nur kraft unserer Gefühle? Entgegen der philosophischen Tradition, in der die Gefühle überwiegend als irrational und subjektiv abgetan wurden, zielt der vorliegende Sammelband auf den Nachweis, dass die Gefühle einen integralen und unverzichtbaren Bestandteil rationalen Urteilens und Handelns bilden. Neben der Darstellung verschiedener Facetten moderner kognitivistischer Gefühlsphilosophie kommt dabei auch die Psychologie zu Wort.

Wenn es um „den Kapitalismus“ geht, regieren schnell die Gefühle. Die Philosophen Sabine Döring und Lars Neth appellieren an die Vernunft. -/- Interview: Wolf Lotter.

In this survey of feminist theory, Rosemarie Tong provides coverage of the psychoanalytic, existential and postmodern schools of feminism. The author guides the reader through the complexities of even the most notoriously difficult thinkers. Students will meet and become familiar with many of the essential figures in the feminist tradition, from Wollstonecraft and Engel, on through de Beauvoir, Dinnerstein, and Daly, and up to Mitchell and Cixous. The text treats all views with respect and encourages students to think critically and (...) sympathetically about a wide range of views that have a direct relevance to their own lives. (shrink)

Pure time preference is a preference for something to come at one point in time rather than another merely because of when it occurs in time. In opposition to Sidgwick, Ramsey, Rawls, and Parfit we argue that it is not always irrational to be guided by pure time preferences. We argue that even if the mere difference of location in time is not a rational ground for a preference, time may nevertheless be a normatively neutral ground for a preference, and (...) this makes it plausible to claim that the preference is rationally permitted. (shrink)

Finds in Plato's dialogue not only a discussion, but also a demonstration of his philosophical principles.

Hiring international migrant eldercare workers to work hard for little pay simply because this traveling workforce needs wages higher than those they would receive back home seems somehow “wrong.” The standard justification for hiring migrants seems more like an excuse than a justification. My purpose in this article, however, is not to condemn people who hire international migrant eldercare workers, but to suggest that these employers as well as their employees are caught in the same moral bind. Depending on how (...) uncaring a state is about meeting its people’s fundamental needs including adequate long-term care, it will create a hostile environment for the development of caring people. But a society without a sufficient number of caring people risks unraveling. People who avoid care work and who shun the practice of care are, in my estimation, “marginal” to society in that they are not contributing to the foundation that makes society possible. (shrink)

Even today entering Neapolis, modern day Kavala, in Greece it is possible to imagine Paul stepping off a ship onto the landing. This is the craft of the author of Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostle to engage the hearer in the narrative he constructs: in Acts, the birth and mission of the church is a story in which the audience have a role. According to Acts, Paul followed a vision, a call from a certain Macedonian to 'Come (...) over to Macedonia and help us'. What would he have expected to find as he set out on a sea voyage from Asia to Macedonia, the home of Alexander the Great? Paul's landing is commemorated on a wall mosaic with ancient stone bollards and pillars slightly inland from the current promenade where the fishing boats line up around the bay. Paul's embarkation on this journey has all the hallmarks of mission. His journey will take him to Philippi and beyond. The focus here is particularly on his encounter with Lydia and the flourishing of this mission in a distinct and different place with new opportunities for the development and growth of leadership and community. In particular I will concentrate on the insights of this narrative for the engagement with new frontiers in our present day. (shrink)

There is more to law than rules, robes and precedents. Rather, law is an integral part of social practices and policies, as diverse and complex as society itself. Thinking About Law offers a comprehensive introduction to the ways in which law has been presented and represented. It explores historical, sociological, economic and philosophical perspectives on the major legal and political debates in Australia today. The contributors examine the position of Aborigines in the Australian legal system and the impact of the (...) Mabo case; divisions of power in Australian society and law; the question of objectivity in law; the relationship between legislation and social change; judicial decision-making and other issues. Accessibly written, Thinking About Law is essential reading for students and anyone interested in understanding our legal system. (shrink)