This paper provides a philosophical analysis of some of the things faculty do to maximize their Student Evaluation of Teachers scores. It examines 28 practices that are claimed to be unethical methods for maximizing SET scores. The paper offers an argument concerning the morality of each behavior and concludes that 13 of the 28 practices suggest unethical behavior. The remaining 15 behaviors are morally permissible.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Can Artificial Intelligence be more effective than human instruction for the moral enhancement of people? The author argues that it only would be if the use of this technology were aimed at increasing the individual's capacity to reflectively decide for themselves, rather than at directly influencing behaviour. To support this, it is shown how a disregard for personal autonomy, in particular, invalidates the main proposals for applying new technologies, both biomedical and AI-based, to moral enhancement. As an alternative to these (...) proposals, this article proposes a virtual assistant that, through dialogue, neutrality and virtual reality technologies, can teach users to make better moral decisions on their own. The author concludes that, as long as certain precautions are taken in its design, such an assistant could do this better than a human instructor adopting the same educational methodology. (shrink)

The reasons conception is the most prominent account of the nature of critical thinking. It consists in responding appropriately to reasons. Responding to reasons can be following a rule, it can be making an exception to a rule, it can be responding to a situation that is unique. It depends on the context each time what is the appropriate response. Critical thinking is the educational cognate of rationality and is a sine qua non for a reasonable life in a modern (...) democratic society. Reasons are generally normative. If this is true then it is to be expected that critical thinking is normative and also rationality. Critical thinking consists in being appropriately moved by reasons. The normative element of reasons moves us to beliefs or actions. It depends on our character how reasons move us. This indicates that our character must be well formed to enable us to be appropriately moved. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the three famous female characters in Socratic philosophy – namely on Aspasia of Miletus, Diotima of Mantineia and Theodota. The main aim of this paper is to argue for the hypothesis that the female characters in the Socratic literature and the ideas to which they refer are of much greater importance than the masculine characters and even represent some exemplary examples of philosophical wisdom. We will try to verify this hypothesis by analyzing important parts from Platoʼs (...) dialogue Symposium, Xenophonʼs Memorabilia, and by examining some fragments that have been preserved from Aeschines of Sphettus. (shrink)