Introduction to Education provides pre-service teachers with an overview of the context, craft and practice of teaching in Australian schools as they commence the journey from learner to classroom teacher. Each chapter poses questions about the nature of teaching students, and guides readers though the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Incorporating recent research and theoretical literature, Introduction to Education presents a critical consideration of the professional, policy and curriculum contexts of teaching in Australia. The book covers theoretical topics in chapters (...) addressing assessment, planning, safe learning environments, and working with colleagues, families, carers and communities. More practical chapters discuss professional experience and building a career after graduation. Rigorous in conception and practical in scope, Introduction to Education welcomes new educators to the theory and practical elements of teaching, learning, and professional practice. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider what is commonly referred to as Leibniz’s argument for primitive concepts. After presenting and criticizing (in sections 1 and 2) one recent rather straightforward way of interpreting this argument, by Paul Lodge and Stephen Puryear, which takes the argument to be merely about the structure of concepts, we offer an alternative way of looking at the argument. We think it is best seen as being fundamentally about the relation between thought and reality. In order (...) to prepare the ground for our reconstruction (which we present in section 5), we have to introduce his view of ideas or concepts (section 3), as well as some metaphysical principles concerning reality-dependence (section 4). (shrink)

According to one of Leibniz's theories of contingency a proposition is contingent if and only if it cannot be proved in a finite number of steps. It has been argued that this faces the Problem of Lucky Proof , namely that we could begin by analysing the concept ‘Peter’ by saying that ‘Peter is a denier of Christ and …’, thereby having proved the proposition ‘Peter denies Christ’ in a finite number of steps. It also faces a (...) more general but related problem that we dub the Problem of Guaranteed Proof . We argue that Leibniz has an answer to these problems since for him one has not proved that ‘Peter denies Christ’ unless one has also proved that ‘Peter’ is a consistent concept, an impossible task since it requires the full decomposition of the infinite concept ‘Peter’. We defend this view from objections found in the literature and maintain that for Leibniz all truths about created individual beings are contingent. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Literature as Sheltering the HumanJohn Durham PetersLiterature as Sheltering the Human, by Frederic Will; 203 pp. Lewiston, Maine: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993, $69.95.This volume contains thirteen essays by Frederic Will, poet, critic, ex-professor of literature, autobiographer, translator, man of letters. All concern the peculiar powers of literature to offer spiritual comfort and protection against the storms of life.A cluster of four theoretical essays begins the collection. The first (...) surveys Husserl’s intellectual offspring, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Heidegger, and seeks in their philosophies of language a grounding for literature’s uniqueness. The second essay argues that everyday language is always on the verge of entropy, but at its best, can be sublimated into literature. The third essay is a fiction of a crazed lit professor trying to master “the whole of literature” (p. 41). The eternally elusive object of “literature” turns out to evoke erotic-aggressive energies. The fourth essay on “Influencing the Past” rehearses some Benjaminian and Borgesian themes about literary influence being not causality, but intertextual resonance.The next set of five essays—which Will calls a “testimony” (p. 133) or “hit and run theology” (p. 138)—forms the core of the book. They treat “sheltering the human” in Homer, the Bible, Sappho, the Bhagavad Gita, and the epistles of St. Paul. Each ponders an enclosure—a retreat from battle, a womb, an act of translation, an inward wrestle of conscience, the blood of Christ—made of words. To my mind, this is the best part of the book: a steady meditation, graced with poetic lines and steeped in wide learning, on the proposition that “poetically man dwells.” Here Will performs the humane survey of world-literature he elsewhere extolls.The concluding section explores the relation of literature to the other arts. There is an essay on the gradual discovery of the oral core of Greek literature, largely through German scholarship, and one on literature’s relation to the other arts, which argues for its unique centrality among human expressive forms, thanks to its alleged continuity with the essential human possession, language. The penultimate essay meditates on Adorno’s aesthetics of music (concluding on an affirmative note not quite in tune with Adorno’s gloomy musings on capitalism), and the grand finale muses on the relation of art to life, via the dubious conceit of “art” as a great resort hotel.The book is remarkable for an intense and bald aestheticism that is exceedingly rare today. Will calls literature “the ripest offspring of language” (p. 1) and is happy to speak of masterpieces, genius, revelation, the autonomy of art, classics, humanism, values lodged in the structure of the universe (p. 125), universal validity (p. 131), “texts high in redemptive claim” (p. 147), the continuing necessity of the classical tradition (p. 190), and the artist as all but a different species (p. 200). The faith in a totality called “literature” is, to put it lightly, out of season in the academy today. As Will, a confirmed foe of [End Page 387] academic politics and pedantry, might well suggest, this may speak in its favor. Though Will’s aestheticism may refresh, I cannot help but wonder with Adorno whether some forms of expression and faith are objectively impossible in certain eras. Can “literature” sustain credulity today as anything more than one among many remarkable human practices?There is something, if I may say it, sheltered about these essays. If, as J. S. Mill said, eloquence is heard but poetry is overheard, this work is more poetry than eloquence. It features repeated and unannounced autobiographical intrusions. The self-reflexive quality supplies ready phrases to the reviewer: Will calls himself a “fallen contemporary classicist,” praises “high-minded eclecticism” and favors those thinkers who “sensualize knowing.” These traits make for a rare voice singing in the cornfields of Iowa.John Durham PetersUniversity of IowaCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Margaret Macdonald was at the institutional heart of analytic philosophy in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Yet, her views on the nature of philosophical theories diverge quite considerably from those of many of her contemporaries. In this paper, I focus on her 1953 article ‘Linguistic Philosophy and Perception’, a provocative paper in which Macdonald argues that the value of philosophical theories is more akin to that of poetry or art than science or mathematics. I do so for two reasons. First, (...) because it reveals just how far Macdonald’s meta- philosophical views diverged from those of many of her contemporaries. Second, because the discussion in LPP pre-empts recent literature on the nature of philosophical inquiry and the efficacy of philosophical arguments. Indeed, Macdonald’s paper is just as likely to provoke discussion today as it was in the 1950s. (shrink)

Berkeley’s likeness principle is the claim that “an idea can be like nothing but an idea”. The likeness principle is intended to undermine representationalism: the view (that Berkeley attributes to thinkers like Descartes and Locke) that all human knowledge is mediated by ideas in the mind which represent material objects. Yet, Berkeley appears to leave the likeness principle unargued for. This has led to several attempts to explain why Berkeley accepts it. In contrast to ‘metaphysical’ and ‘epistemological’ interpretations available in (...) the literature, in this paper I defend a ‘conceptual’ interpretation. I argue that Berkeley accepts the likeness principle on the basis of (i) his commitment to the transparency of ideas, and (ii) his account of resemblance which he sets out in his works on vision. Thus, I provide an explanation for Berkeley’s reasons for accepting the likeness principle which, appropriately, focuses on his views concerning ideas and likeness. (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical evaluation of the concept of handedness prevalent but largely unspoken in the scientific literature. This literature defines handedness as the preference or ability to use one hand rather than the other across a range of common activities. Using the philosophical discipline of phenomenology, I articulate and critique this conceptualization of handedness. Phenomenology shows defining a concept of handedness by focusing on hand use leads to a right hand biased concept. I argue further that a phenomenological (...) model based in spatial orientation rather than hand use provides a more inclusive concept of handedness. (shrink)

It is argued that causal understanding originates in experiences of acting on objects. Such experiences have consistent features that can be used as clues to causal identification and judgment. These are singular clues, meaning that they can be detected in single instances. A catalog of 14 singular clues is proposed. The clues function as heuristics for generating causal judgments under uncertainty and are a pervasive source of bias in causal judgment. More sophisticated clues such as mechanism clues and repeated interventions (...) are derived from the 14. Research on the use of empirical information and conditional probabilities to identify causes has used scenarios in which several of the clues are present, and the use of empirical association information for causal judgment depends on the presence of singular clues. It is the singular clues and their origin that are basic to causal understanding, not multiple instance clues such as empirical association, contingency, and conditional probabilities. (shrink)

In this important new book in the IPPP series, a group of leading thinkers in psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy offer alternative perspectives that address both the scientific and clinical aspects of psychiatric validation, emphasizing throughout their philosophical and historical considerations.

William Molyneux was born in Dublin, studied in Trinity College Dublin, and was a founding member of the Dublin Philosophical Society (DPS), Ireland’s counterpart to the Royal Society in London. He was a central figure in the Irish intellectual milieu during the Early Modern period and – along with George Berkeley and Edmund Burke – is one of the best-known thinkers to have come out of that context and out of Irish thought more generally. In 1688, when Molyneux wrote the (...) letter to Locke in which he posed the now famous question about a man born blind made to see, he was an active member of the DPS and was on familiar terms with several other key figures in Irish philosophy at the time. For the most part, Irish thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries answered “no” to Molyneux’s question of whether a blind man made to see could distinguish, by sight alone, between a cube and a sphere. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In September 2008, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists successfully switched on the historic biggest physics device, the Large ...

"This book is an augmented and updated translation by the author of Theorie des Subjekts: Subjectiviteat und Identiteat zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne, Teubingen, Francke-UTB, 2010 (3rd ed.)"--Title page verso.

In my contribution to this Concise Collection on Margaret Cavendish, I focus on teaching Cavendish’s work in the context of philosophy (and, more specifically, Early Modern Philosophy). I have three aims. First, to explain why teaching women from philosophy’s history is crucially important to the discipline. Second, to outline my own reflections on teaching Cavendish’s philosophy. Third, to defend a specific claim about the benefits of teaching Cavendish to philosophy students; namely, that introducing biographical detail alongside philosophical ideas enriches the (...) learning experience. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"—our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals—inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. In Animal Liberation, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today’s "factory farms" and product-testing procedures—destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. (...) An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike. (shrink)

Prospect Theory: For Risk and Ambiguity, provides a comprehensive and accessible textbook treatment of the way decisions are made both when we have the statistical probabilities associated with uncertain future events and when we lack them. The book presents models, primarily prospect theory, that are both tractable and psychologically realistic. A method of presentation is chosen that makes the empirical meaning of each theoretical model completely transparent. Prospect theory has many applications in a wide variety of disciplines. The material in (...) the book has been carefully organized to allow readers to select pathways through the book relevant to their own interests. With numerous exercises and worked examples, the book is ideally suited to the needs of students taking courses in decision theory in economics, mathematics, finance, psychology, management science, health, computer science, Bayesian statistics, and engineering. (shrink)

P.F. Strawson's essay traces some formal characteristics of logic and grammar to their roots in general features of thought and experience.

In der genannten Epoche werden Grundentscheidungen gefällt, welche die Fundamentalfrage der Philosophie, die Seinsfrage, in die Krisis führen, in den Nihilismus unter ontologischem, metaphysischem, epistemologischem, axiologischem Aspekt. Den Extrempositionen der Systemdenker Hegel, Schopenhauer und Schelling erwachsen in den Hegelkritikern Feuerbach, Br. Bauer, Marx und Stirner Kontrapositionen, die das Wahrheitsproblem der Beliebigkeit unterstellen. Kierkegaard klagt unter existentiellem Aspekt das Problem der Wahrheit ein. Nietzsche überholt durch Abschaffung der Wahrheit alle Positionen,was seinen Standort in der europäischen Denkgeschichte ausmacht und als Ergebnis der (...) problemgeschichtlichen Analysen zu charakterisieren ist. Die Rückgewinnung des Vernunfthorizontes setzen erst die Problemdenker N. Hartmann und M. Heidegger ins Werk durch kritische Erneuerung der Seinsfrage. (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)

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)

An examination of topics involved in statistical reasoning with imprecise probabilities. The book discusses assessment and elicitation, extensions, envelopes and decisions, the importance of imprecision, conditional previsions and coherent statistical models.

It is often said that there can be no conflict between the two great departments of human interest, called Religion and Science, because they deal with different themes in totally different ways, and therefore never overlap, so that there is no possibility of a fight—the kind of thing that used to be said about Nations before 1914. But this is an exaggeration; no human being can always be satisfied with any one department of knowledge; there are times when he must (...) seek a more comprehensive view. The alternative is to keep your thoughts from straying out of the region to which you are attending, and concentrate on one side only at a time. This has been the practice of many good people, and it is certainly one way of avoiding conflict.But it is not a philosophic or permanently satisfying way. Between the two great regions there is a frontier, and there squabbles and conflicts may occur, unless there be some way of reconciling the frontier inhabitants of the two regions. Our senses tell us that there is a material world full of things which we can investigate; our instincts and intuitions tell us that there is a mental and spiritual world where also we can feel at home. But the object of this article is to show that there is also an etheric or metetheral world, which spreads over both the other regions, and may be the means of reconciling them or of enabling us to attend to either or both without dislocation or shock. (shrink)

Had I been asked any time last century to discourse to philosophers on a subject entitled “Beyond Physics,” I should have taken it as meaning “Metaphysics,” and have declined on the ground that they knew more about it than I did. But now that the subject has been suggested to me in the second quarter of the twentieth century, I realize that a certain number of physicists, especially mathematical ones, have gone beyond themselves in a semiphilosophical direction, have thrown our (...) old physical ideas into some confusion, and have devised a number of complicated abstractions which they seem able to deal with by recondite methods invented for other purposes by the pure mathematicians. Of these they do not attempt to form any mental image, and do not encourage us to try to do so. They mistrust the method of physical imagery, or what they call “models,” which constituted one of the main methods of investigation in the nineteenth century; they are content to deal with abstract symbols, which presumably represent something real, though they mistrust the term “reality,” and decline to define it. The younger modern physicists are content to work in a nebulous region of unknown and perhaps unknowable entities, remote from our ordinary conceptions and everyday experiences; so that, whereas the old idea of explanation consisted in trying to express mysterious or recondite phenomena in terms of something with which we were more familiar, they now point out that our apparent familiarity with those simpler things was more or less of an illusion, that they furnished no valid explanation at all, and that the physical and engineering conceptions or habits of thought on which we depended were largely misleading. (shrink)

In the January number of the quarterly journal published by The British Institute of Philosophy, called Philosophy, Sir James Jeans with extraordinary ability has represented the view of the universe which may be held now in the twentieth century by a mathematician, and concludes that this representation contributes to and upholds an idealistic philosophy. Now with the contention that an idealistic philosophy is superior to any other, that is to say nearer the truth, we may be allowed to sympathize. Several (...) physicists, even in the nineteenth century, were inclined to sustain the essence of Berkeley's view, or to consider that metaphysical truth must lie somewhere in that direction. G. F. FitzGerald, for instance, was notably of that opinion. But he was not prepared on that account to abandon the physical view of existence, and to take refuge in mere mathematical abstractions. (shrink)

In The Metaphysics of Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway, Marcy P. Lascano holds up the metaphysical views of two early modern women philosophers alongside one another in order to demonstrate that...