Citizenship under Fire examines the relationship among civic education, the culture of war, and the quest for peace. Drawing on examples from Israel and the United States, Sigal Ben-Porath seeks to understand how ideas about citizenship change when a country is at war, and what educators can do to prevent some of the most harmful of these changes.Perhaps the most worrisome one, Ben-Porath contends, is a growing emphasis in schools and elsewhere on social conformity, on tendentious teaching (...) of history, and on drawing stark distinctions between them and us. As she writes, "The varying characteristics of citizenship in times of war and peace add up to a distinction between belligerent citizenship, which is typical of democracies in wartime, and the liberal democratic citizenship that is characteristic of more peaceful democracies."Ben-Porath examines how various theories of education--principally peace education, feminist education, and multicultural education--speak to the distinctive challenges of wartime. She argues that none of these theories are satisfactory on their own theoretical terms or would translate easily into practice. In the final chapter, she lays out her own alternative theory--"expansive education"--which she believes holds out more promise of widening the circles of participation in schools, extending the scope of permissible debate, and diversifying the questions asked about the opinions voiced. (shrink)

The diversity of contemporary democratic nations challenges scholars and educators to develop forms of education that would both recognize difference and develop a shared foundation for a functioning democracy. In this essay Sigal Ben-Porath develops the concept of shared fate as a theoretical and practical response to this challenge. Shared fate offers a viable alternative to current forms of citizenship education, one that develops a significant shared dimension while respecting deep differences within a political community. It is grounded (...) in the social and moral realities of civic life, and it seeks to weave the historical, political, and social ties among members of the nation into a form of affiliation that would sustain and expand their shared political project. Some particular educational contexts are considered through the lens of shared fate, including the resegregation of some schooling systems, linguistic diversity, and patriotic education. (shrink)

In this essay, Ben-Porath begins from the assumption that just war theory should be extended to include a jus post bellum component. Postwar conduct should be significantly informed by a care ethics perspective, particularly its political aspects as developed by Joan Tronto and others. Care ethics should be extended to the international postwar arena with one significant amendment, namely, weakening the aim of ending dependence.

School choice is most often viewed through the lens of provision: most of the debate on the issue searches for desirable ways to offer vouchers, scholarships or other tools that provides choice as a way to achieve equality and/or freedom. This paper focuses on the consumer side of school choice, and utilises behavioural economics as well as ethnographic and network studies to consider ways to structure choice which respond to actual cognitive and social processes of choice. These empirical studies give (...) scholars and policy-makers who grapple with school choice a perspective that should affect the principled design of these programs as well as their execution. The paper considers the ways in which actual choice processes should affect current visions of school choice. It concludes with recommendations concerning the design of choice sets and the accessibility of information regarding choice, which together can assist school choice policies in better fulfilling their promise of equality and freedom. (shrink)

Democracies are calling on schools to respond to a rise in extremist ideologies and actions. In this article Sigal Ben-Porath situates the rise in extremism within the broader context of political polarization. She suggests that the latter is a more appropriate target for school intervention than the former. She further suggests that addressing polarization can result in a reduction in extremism, and that polarization can be addressed by refocusing the use of existing teaching and learning tools, rather than (...) by instituting new forms of intervention such as the Prevent strategy used in the UK. Tackling polarization through media literacy and the development of democratic habits can help rectify false beliefs, which contribute both to broad political polarization and to individuals' slide toward extremism. Focusing on strengthening knowledge as well as social ties can fortify individuals' and communities' resilience against extremism, as well as build bridges and connect people to a sense of shared fate across political divides. These practices are more effective and more justified than targeting individual students who are suspected of holding radical beliefs. (shrink)

In this essay, Ben-Porath begins from the assumption that just war theory should be extended to include a jus post bellum component. Postwar conduct should be significantly informed by a care ethics perspective, particularly its political aspects as developed by Joan Tronto and others. Care ethics should be extended to the international postwar arena with one significant amendment, namely, weakening the aim of ending dependence.

The state's commitment to educating all children can be framed as a matter of human capital development, or the economic benefits accrued to individuals and society as a result of educational attainment; it can be framed as a matter of capabilities, or the development of functionings that enable human flourishing; and it can be framed as a matter of rights. In this essay Sigal Ben-Porath considers the relative merits of the three approaches, elaborating the implications each of these (...) different frameworks has for the education of children with disabilities. While the capabilities approach, which arises from and relates to the rights approach, is sensitive to the needs of individuals with disabilities (more than the human capital approach is, in any case), Ben-Porath concludes that a rights framework can best express through educational policy the state's commitment to the education of all children, regardless of ability. (shrink)

In this essay, Ben-Porath begins from the assumption that just war theory should be extended to include a jus post bellum component. Postwar conduct should be significantly informed by a care ethics perspective, particularly its political aspects as developed by Joan Tronto and others. Care ethics should be extended to the international postwar arena with one significant amendment, namely, weakening the aim of ending dependence.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This anthology of articles provides contemporary international feminist perspectives on issues of identity, agency, and difference as they pertain to both feminist politics in particular, and contemporary western politics more generally.

When a nation declares war, it rarely takes time to define the concept. When a peace treaty is signed, governments and peoples assume that they know what to exp.

When a nation declares war, it rarely takes time to define the concept. When a peace treaty is signed, governments and peoples assume that they know what to exp.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 698-700, August 2012.

In this paper I explore how citizenship education might position students as always/everywhere political to diminish the pervasive belief that one either is or is not a “political person.” By focusing on how liberal and radical democracy are both necessary frameworks for engaging with issues of power, I address how we might reframe citizenship education to highlight the ubiquity of politics, offering a deepened sense of democracy. This reframing of citizenship education entails highlighting how liberalism and radical democracy are mutually (...) reinforcing when it comes to illustrating political life as entangled in power relations. My argument centers on Sigal Ben-Porath’s :381–395, 2012) concept of shared fate as a frame for citizenship education. In this model, students are habituated into thinking of democracy as an “enduring pluralism” in which their fates are connected to that of their fellow citizens. In this paper I recast shared fate education in the singular to an education of shared fates in the plural. By doing so I theorize how citizenship education might construct citizenship as relational, emotional, embedded in power, and uncomfortable. (shrink)

To demonstrate their appreciation for the inevitability of choice on the educational landscape, the authors acknowledge: the moral and legal right of parents to choose an education they think ‘best’ for their own child; the necessity of plural educational provision in a liberal democratic society; the legitimate concerns many parents have about the quality of education on offer; and even the (not occasional) success of copious educational alternatives, which may or may not foster innovation. So far so good. But a (...) number of difficulties quickly come into view. (shrink)

Claims concerning processes, claims of the form “xisφing”, have been the subject of renewed interest in recent years in the philosophy of action. However, this interest has frequently limited itself to noting certain formal features such claims have, and has not extended to a discussion of when they are true. This article argues that a claim of the form “xisφing” is true when what is happening withxis such that, if it is not interrupted, a φing will occur. It then applies (...) itself more directly to the case of action, arguing that when “xisφing” describesx's intentional action, it is true iffxis acting from a method she knows to be sufficient to φ, in the sense that if she is not interrupted in carrying out this method, she will φ. I use this criterion to argue that the carbon‐copier example Donald Davidson gives in “Intending” fails to refute Elizabeth Anscombe's claim that an agent who is φing intentionally knows that she is, because the agent in Davidson's example is not intentionally making the copies. (shrink)

Abstract:This article sets out two central theses. Both theses primarily involve a fundamental criticism of current contractarian business ethics (CBE), but if these can be sustained, they also constitute two boundary conditions for any future contractarian theory of business ethics. The first, which I label the self-discipline thesis, claims that current CBE would gain considerably in focus if more attention were paid to the logic of the social contract argument. By this I mean the aims set by the theorist and (...) method of reasoning by which normative conclusions are drawn in the contract model. The second, to which I refer as the domain-specificity thesis, argues that current CBE needs to be better adapted to its field of application and the specific goals which it aims to establish. I will substantiate these two theses on the basis of a comparative analysis of CBE with two earlier families of social contract theories. (shrink)

Anthropologists working on altered states of consciousness (ASC) have suggested that we should do away with psychologizing concepts and use people's own terms for these experiences. With material drawn from the Orang Sakai of Sumatra this paper shows that practitioners who utilize ASC do recognize the alteration of states of awareness as preconditions for numinous interactions. Also critically discussed is the term ASC.

This article examines the historically embedded relations of three 19th-century phenomena in which the non-consuming body is constituted as a spectacle of admiration. These three phenomena, known as Fasting Women, Living Skeletons and Hunger Artists, all emerged and disappeared in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Viewing the emergence and disappearance of the three phenomena as embedded in the historical crossroads of pre-modern and modern ethics, the article argues that each of these phenomena corresponds differently to the clash between (...) modern `rationality' and the pre-modern celebration of `miracles'. The article maintains that while Fasting Women epitomized that clash by becoming (a highly contested) spectacle of `the miraculous', the Living Skeletons transcended the clash by portraying a spectacle of liminal corporeality (the `living dead') and the Hunger Artists announced the dissolution of that very clash by performing a spectacle of `the controlled self'. Through a focus on the spectacle of fasting (i.e. the appeared, performed, `gazed at' act of fasting), a phenomenological typology of the three phenomena is outlined. I suggest that while Fasting Women and Living Skeletons embodied a spectacle of a lean body, which does not require suffering, the Hunger Artists embodied a spectacle of hunger centred on suffering and pain. The phenomenological `mapping' of these phenomena is then considered in the context of `performativity theory' and proposed as a frame of reference for a sociological study of anorexia nervosa. (shrink)

Some jurisdictions that allow assisted dying require participating patients to have a terminal illness. This includes all Australian and US states where assisted dying is allowed. 1 Philip Reed 2 argues that this requirement constitutes discrimination against the dying. As Reed 2 argues: ‘assisted death laws that limit their services to the dying discriminate against them because death is offered to them to solve their problems’. This discrimination could take two forms: (1) via harm to dying patients as a group (...) as a result of the existence of assisted dying programmes; (2) via a negative message that such programmes communicate about whether the lives of dying patients are worth living. Assisted dying programmes are not unjustly discriminatory in either sense so long as we assume that unjust discrimination requires harm to the group in question. If assisted dying singles out the terminally ill for a programme... (shrink)

I argue that we can visually perceive others as seeing agents. I start by characterizing perceptual processes as those that are causally controlled by proximal stimuli. I then distinguish between various forms of visual perspective-taking, before presenting evidence that most of them come in perceptual varieties. In doing so, I clarify and defend the view that some forms of visual perspective-taking are “automatic”—a view that has been marshalled in support of dual-process accounts of mindreading.

Lucid, learned, and incomparably rich in thought and detail, Art Without Borders is a monumental accomplishment, on par with the artistic achievements ...

An introduction to comparative philosophy relates European and Oriental philosophies and brings to light such aspects of Eastern philosophy as intellectuality, reasoning, and logical analysis usually associated with Western thought.

The adventure I am now undertaking is an appraisal of my profession, philosophy, of my fellow professionals, the philosophers, and, finally of myself at least ...

Medical science at its core aims to preserve health and eliminate disease, but a common theme in scientific discovery is the application of findings in ways that were not the primary intent. The development of diagnostic modalities to predict the health of resulting children has been a fundamental aim underpinning research into prenatal and preimplantation diagnostic modalities; however, the knowledge gained has in some cases been utilized for nonmedical purposes. As an example, amniocentesis developed to determine whether the pregnancy is (...) chromosomally normal also provides information about the sex of the fetus, which normally does not affect health. The emerging gene‐editing technologies that could be used to repair mutated disease‐causing genes in an embryo will presumably also be able to be used to alter traits unrelated to disease. And yet, I will argue, the desire to preserve the mystery of reproduction remains a central value in humans’ quest to reproduce. This yearning to maintain the mysteries will likely temper the development of strategies to alter our genome and affect the genetic identities of our offspring. In my experience as an obstetrician and reproductive endocrinology and infertility subspecialist, people want to have, not the best possible baby, but rather their own baby. (shrink)

The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief (...) in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met. (shrink)

I examine the origins of ordinary racial thinking. In doing so, I argue against the thesis that it is the byproduct of a unique module. Instead, I defend a pluralistic thesis according to which different forms of racial thinking are driven by distinct mechanisms, each with their own etiology. I begin with the belief that visible features are diagnostic of race. I argue that the mechanisms responsible for face recognition have an important, albeit delimited, role to play in sustaining this (...) belief. I then argue that essentialist beliefs about race are driven by some of the mechanisms responsible for “entitativity perception”: the tendency to perceive some aggregates of people as more genuine groups than others. Finally, I argue that coalitional thinking about race is driven by a distinctive form of entitativity perception. However, I suggest that more data is needed to determine the prevalence of this form of racial thinking. (shrink)

Current research claims loneliness is passively _caused_ by external conditions: environmental, cultural, situational, and even chemical imbalances in the brain and hence avoidable. In this book, the author argues that loneliness is actively _constituted_ by acts of reflexive self-consciousness and transcendent intentionality and therefore unavoidable.

We focus on two issues: (1) an unusual, counterintuitive prediction that quantum probability (QP) theory appears to make regarding multiple sequential judgments, and (2) the extent to which QP is an appropriate and comprehensive benchmark for assessing judgment. These issues highlight how QP theory can fall prey to the same problems of arbitrariness that Pothos & Busemeyer (P&B) discuss as plaguing other models.

In the engaging and thought-provoking book The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have Kids and the Kids We Have, Bonnie Rochman addresses the question of choice in human reproduction through the lens of knowledge. Asserting that the desire for knowledge is the central theme of modern-day reproduction, she asks, “Is genetic knowledge empowering or fear-inducing or both?” Yet the question at the heart of the book goes beyond knowledge. Rochman delves into whether genetic information is (...) actionable and then examines the corollary question of whether individuals should make decisions based on this data. Do parents want to choose the kinds of kids they have? Certainly, most parents would do what they could to prevent their child from having a painful, life-limiting disease. But that is the extreme. And while genetic technologies generally start by targeting the extreme, the inevitable byproduct is the ability to know about and affect the fringe. It is at the borders that the critical questions lie. Taking advantage of reproductive choices has potentially life-altering and permanent consequences not only for the chooser but also for the resulting child, the family unit, and society. (shrink)