This book shows readers how philosophy of education relates to and influences classroom practice.The book presents the authors' own philosophy of education and places it in the context of a broad range of other classic and contemporary perspectives. Within each chapter the theory is related to schools and classrooms as they really exist including issues and problems that teachers, parents, students, and administrators face daily. The book is easily accessible in approach, cutting-edge in its multicultural and feminist focus, and rich (...) in its development of philosophical issues. (shrink)

I write this short essay in response to Peirce, as a feminist, pragmatist, and cultural studies scholar, in the hope that it will help to bring feminism and pragmatism together. I suggest that Peirce offers marginalized and colonized people a way to argue for the importance of their input, with his theory of fallibilism, even if he still claims a position of privilege. He also offers assistance through his concept of “a community of inquirers.” It is curious that Peirce’s definition (...) of a university argues for a split between theory and practice that his earlier work sought to heal. Peirce opened a door to help diverse scholars be able to enter the university, and find a way to address issues of power, with his youthful connecting of theory to practice, that his more senior position draws our attention away from and seeks to hold off. Fortunately, it is too late. Peirce’s youthful pragmatism has been developed in important ways by other scholars and now serves as an example of a way to do philosophy that does connect theory to practice and does seek to address real problems in diverse peoples lives, and help to find solutions that effect change. (shrink)

John Case , the most important English Aristotelian of the Renaissance period, has not yet received the attention he deserves. In his Lapis philosophicus , an exposition of Aristotle's Physics, is found a discussion of the relation of nature to art which parallels in many ways that formulated a few years later in the writings of Francis Bacon. Case argues, in a way more reminiscent of the works of Giambattista della Porta than of those of Aristotle, that the natural (...) philosopher can legitimately apply the productive arts in helping nature to fulfill her function. Moreover, while rejecting the excessive claims of the Paracelsians, Case does accept the transmutational claims of the alchemists. In the final analysis, his ‘Aristotelianism’ has been tempered by the tradition of Renaissance natural magic. Like many other Peripatetic thinkers of the period, Case shows himself to be an eclectic, drawing materials from a wide variety of sources and open to many of the new scientific tendencies then developing. (shrink)

Burke approaches man in terms of human actions. His key concepts--elucidated at length in A Grammar of Motives --are act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. Men are viewed as agents acting in a scene and using some agency for the accomplishment of some purpose. This is a "field" orientation of the sort found in George H. Mead's "philosophy of the act," in Edward C. Tolman's "purposive behaviorism," and in Talcott Parson's concept of "action-system." Burke makes many references to Mead, and (...) his approach to man is very similar to Mead's in its stress upon the act, upon man as a symbol-using agent, and upon the forms of "identification" which role-taking makes possible. The focus of Burke's attention is, however, upon man's literary products as a mirror in which to behold the forms and complexity of human motivation. He is in effect telling us--and showing us--the importance of the study of man's most complex symbolic acts as a way of enriching our understanding of human nature. In the Rhetoric, humanistic material is penetratingly analysed in a way which supplements and broadens the conception of man gained from more narrowly scientific studies. In his discussion of the range and the principles of rhetoric Burke considers Cicero, Aristotle, Augustine, Bacon, Bentham, Marx, Carlyle, Empson, Veblen, Diderot, La Rochefoucauld, De Gourmont, Pascal, Ovid, Machiavelli, and Dante. Of his analyses of literary works the pages on Castiglione, Shakespere, Kafka, and Kierkegaard are very fine. That no student of man should neglect this humanistic material or this mode of linguistic analysis is convincingly attested by Burke's achievements. (shrink)

This book explores how far some leading philosophers, from Montaigne to Hume, used Academic Scepticism to build their own brand of scepticism or took it as its main sceptical target. The book offers a detailed view of the main modern key figures, including Sanches, Charron, La Mothe Le Vayer, Bacon, Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, Pascal, Foucher, Huet, and Bayle. In addition, it provides a comprehensive assessment of the role of Academic Scepticism in Early Modern philosophy and a complete survey of (...) the period. As a whole, the book offers a basis for a new, balanced assessment of the role played by scepticism in both its forms. Since Richard Popkin's works, there has been considerable interest in the role played by Pyrrhonian Scepticism in Early Modern Philosophy. Comparatively, Academic Scepticism was much neglected by scholars, despite some scattered important contributions. Furthermore, a general assessment of the presence of Academic Scepticism in Early Modern Philosophy is lacking. This book fills the void. (shrink)

Monsters as a category seem omnipresent in early modern natural philosophy, in what one might call a “long” early modern period stretching from the Renaissance to the late eighteenth century, when the science of teratology emerges. We no longer use this term to refer to developmental anomalies (whether a two-headed calf, an individual suffering from microcephaly or Proteus syndrome) or to “freak occurrences” like Mary Toft’s supposedly giving birth to a litter of rabbits, in Surrey in the early eighteenth-century (Todd (...) 1995). But the term itself has a rich semantic history, coming from the Latin verb monstrare (itself deriving from monere, to remind, warn, advise), “to show,” from which we also get words like “monitor,” “admonish,” “monument” and “premonition”; hence there are proverbs like, in French, le monstre est ce qui montre, difficult to render in English: “the monsters is that which shows.” Scholars have discussed how this “monstrative” dimension of the monster is in fact twofold: on the one hand, and most awkwardly, the monster is an individual who is “pointed at,” who is shown; on the other hand, the monster is a sign, a portent, an omen, and in that sense “shows us” something (on the complex semantic history of the term across Indo-European languages see Ochsner 2005). The latter dimension persists in naturalized form in the early modern period when authors like Bacon, Fontenelle or William Hunter insist that monsters (or anomalies) can show us something of the workings of Nature. (shrink)

Peirce, Ch. S. Die Festlegung einer Überzeugung.--Peirce, Ch. S. Was heisst Pragmatismus?--James, W. Der Wille zum Glauben.--James, W. Der Wahrheitsbegriff des Pragmatismus.--Schiller, F. C. S. Humanismus.--Dewey, J. Pragmatismus und Pädagogik.

This book presents a thorough overview of a model of human functioning based on the idea that behavior is goal-directed and regulated by feedback control processes. It describes feedback processes and their application to behavior, considers goals and the idea that goals are organized hierarchically, examines affect as deriving from a different kind of feedback process, and analyzes how success expectancies influence whether people keep trying to attain goals or disengage. Later sections consider a series of emerging themes, including dynamic (...) systems as a model for shifting among goals, catastrophe theory as a model for persistence, and the question of whether behavior is controlled or instead 'emerges'. Three chapters consider the implications of these various ideas for understanding maladaptive behavior, and the closing chapter asks whether goals are a necessity of life. Throughout, theory is presented in the context of diverse issues that link the theory to other literatures. (shrink)

lecture 1. Introduction : intellectual history and conceptual change -- lecture 2. The dawn of the 17th century : Aristotelian scholasticism -- lecture 3. The new vision of Francis Bacon -- lecture 4. The new astronomy and cosmology -- lecture 5. Descartes's dream of perfect knowledge -- lecture 6. The specter of Thomas Hobbes -- lecture 7. Skepticism and Jansenism : Blaise Pascal -- lecture 8. Newton's discovery -- lecture 9. The Newtonian revolution -- lecture 10. John Locke, the (...) revolution in knowledge -- lecture 11. The Lockean moment -- lecture 12. Skepticism and Calvanism : Pierre Bayle -- lecture 13. The moderns, the generation of 1680-1715 -- lecture 14. Introduction to deism -- lecture 15. The conflict between deism and Christianity -- lecture 16. Montesquieu and the problem of relativism -- lecture 17. Voltaire, bringing England to France -- lecture 18. Bishop Joseph Butler and God's providence -- lecture 19. The skeptical challenge to optimism, David Hume -- lecture 20. The assault upon philosophical optimism, Voltaire -- lecture 21. The philosophes : the triumph of the French Enlightenment -- lecture 22. Beccaria and enlightened reform -- lecture 23. Rousseau's dissent -- lecture 24. Materialism and naturalism, the boundaries of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

A powerful challenge to some highly influential theories, this book offers a thorough critical exposition of modal realism, the philosophical doctrine that many possible worlds exist of which our own universe is just one. Chihara challenges this claim and offers a new argument for modality without worlds.

v. 1-2. Principles of philosophy and Elements of logic.--v. 3-4. Exact logic (published papers) and The simplest mathematics.--v. 5-6. Pragmatism and pragmaticism and Scientific metaphysics.--v. 7. Science and philosophy.--v. 8. Reviews, correspondence and bibliography.

Arranged and integrated to reveal epistemology, phenomenology, theory of signs, other major topics.

This paper explores some lines of argument in wittgenstein's post-Tractatus writings in order to indicate the relations between wittgenstein's philosophical psychology, On the one hand, And his philosophy of language, His epistemology, And his doctrines about the nature of philosophical analysis on the other. The authors maintain that the later writings of wittgenstein express a coherent doctrine in which an operationalistic analysis of confirmation and language supports a philosophical psychology of a type the authors call "logical behaviorism." they also maintain (...) that there are good grounds for rejecting the philosophical theory implicit in wittgenstein's later works. In particular, They first argue that wittgenstein's position leads to some implausible conclusions concerning the nature of language and psychology; second, They maintain that the arguments wittgenstein provides are inconclusive; and third, They sketch an alternative position which they believe avoids many of the difficulties implicit in wittgenstein's philosophy. (shrink)

Cognitive science, at least as done by many philosophers, seeks to develop what one might call a content-based theory of cognition. These theorists generally seek to predict/explain cognition by employing generalizations between contentful states like beliefs and desires. In his book, From Folk Psychology To Cognitive Science, Stephen Stich argues that cognitive science should not attempt to employ content-based theories in its explanations of human (and other) behavior. For the most part Stich directs his arguments towards belief/desire psychology. Some of (...) his arguments, however, are directed at content-based theories in general. In this paper, I will be concerned with one of these more general arguments—the principle of autonomy argument.The conclusion of the principle of autonomy argument is that the predictions and explanations generated by content-based theories, in so far as they are possible, do not fall within the domain of prediction and explanation in cognitive science. (shrink)

This book is concerned with `the problem of existence in mathematics'. It develops a mathematical system in which there are no existence assertions but only assertions of the constructibility of certain sorts of things. It explores the philosophical implications of such an approach through an examination of the writings of Field, Burgess, Maddy, Kitcher, and others.

We propose a model of motivated skepticism that helps explain when and why citizens are biased information processors. Two experimental studies explore how citizens evaluate arguments about affirmative action and gun control, finding strong evidence of a prior attitude effect such that attitudinally congruent arguments are evaluated as stronger than attitudinally incongruent arguments. When reading pro and con arguments, participants (Ps) counterargue the contrary arguments and uncritically accept supporting arguments, evidence of a disconfirmation bias. We also find a confirmation bias—the (...) seeking out of confirmatory evidence—when Ps are free to self-select the source of the arguments they read. Both the confirmation and disconfirmation biases lead to attitude polarization—the strengthening of t2 over t1 attitudes—especially among those with the strongest priors and highest levels of political sophistication. We conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of these findings for rational behavior in a democracy. (shrink)

We propose a model of motivated skepticism that helps explain when and why citizens are biased information processors. Two experimental studies explore how citizens evaluate arguments about affirmative action and gun control, finding strong evidence of a prior attitude effect such that attitudinally congruent arguments are evaluated as stronger than attitudinally incongruent arguments. When reading pro and con arguments, participants (Ps) counterargue the contrary arguments and uncritically accept supporting arguments, evidence of a disconfirmation bias. We also find a confirmation bias—the (...) seeking out of confirmatory evidence—when Ps are free to self-select the source of the arguments they read. Both the confirmation and disconfirmation biases lead to attitude polarization—the strengthening of t2 over t1 attitudes—especially among those with the strongest priors and highest levels of political sophistication. We conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of these findings for rational behavior in a democracy. (shrink)

This first volume of the Logic of the Future edition collects Peirce's writings on the historical development, theory and application of his graphical method and diagrammatic reasoning. Its 28 selections of texts and extensive general and volume int.

Explores how continental philosophy can inform environmental ethics.