We mathematical animals should be grateful that mathematics is instrumentally useful. We should not, however, forget its other contributions to human happiness. Bertrand Russell and John Dewey offer timely reminders that provide insight into the role of non-mathematicians in the evaluation of mathematics.

That mathematics makes for poor literature is a conclusion as uninteresting as it is inevitable—inevitable because were mathematical prose to score high on a scale of literary value, this result would do more to discredit the scale than glorify the prose. It may, however, help us better understand our cultural landscape if, without attempting a literary appraisal of mathematics or a mathematical appraisal of literature, we search for some community of interest between the formal sciences and the literary arts. This (...) search for common ground will also be an opportunity to learn from some voices seldom heard in conversations about mathematics. Even at the risk of giving our discussion an antiquated flavor, we will... (shrink)

The current emphasis that organisations are placing upon knowledge and the corresponding attention that workplace epistemological values are receiving within the educational community has resulted in an interesting convergence of discourses—school-based and work-based. Even as workplaces are tending toward abstraction over practice—based knowing, schools are being nudged into doing the reverse. The result of this ferment is that traditional barriers between these kinds of knowledge are being removed. As can be seen from workplace examples, it is possible for liberal learning (...) to be in the service of instrumental ends. So too schools may come to see more clearly the value of situatedness and team-work in the transaction of liberal learning. More generally, we see also new possibilities for retreat from received views about the worth of practical knowledge. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the practical question of how the ideas of John Dewey can contribute to improved intercultural communication theory and practice, especially to training. The question is answered in four parts. The first part refers to the presumed superiority of sensitivity to difference as opposed to similarity in intercultural communication. The second part suggests that Dewey’s duality of potentiality and interaction can be carried over to the duality of competence and performance. The third part highlights the use of (...) the generic concepts of pattern and habit to better understand culture as a practical experience. The final part advocates a closer look at the idea and experience of rhythm as an epistemological alternative to subject vs object. The author relies on his experience as a trainer and a teacher of Intercultural Communication and proceeds down an interdisciplinary path, especially attempting to set up a dialogue with biology, systems and the arts. (shrink)

In order to set up a dialogue the author, first, will attempt to discern similarities and differences between the ideas of Gregory Bateson and those of the so-called Pragmatist philosophers, John Dewey and William James. Second, he will address connecting points and relevance to intercultural communication training and teaching. For both sides aesthetics are of central importance, for Bateson, coming from the direction of systems, more in the observation of the pattern that connects. For Dewey, the aesthetic experience is embedded (...) in the context potentially in any situation. For both Dewey and James human and other organisms actively experiencing environments as situations are the beginning and the end of any philosophy of pragmatic significance. For Bateson, the addition of aesthetics to ecology is necessary to highlight its global significance. (shrink)

With these comments I try to explain why I am not quite convinced by the objections of four colleagues who touch on relevant issues of great weight. Axel Honneth claims that I failed to take into account the systematic weight of the Aristotelian tradition which I pursue only up until Thomas Aquinas (1). Peter Gordon points to an asymmetry in the presentation of the discourse between faith and knowledge that allegedly calls into question the independence of what philosophy developed, by (...) its own standards, from an appropriation of semantic contents of religious traditions (2). Regina Kreide and Tilo Wesche explain the central intention that in fact guided me in this book, but criticise the one-sidedness of an undialectical account of learning processes, in whose shadow the victims tend to be neglected (3). (shrink)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

John Dewey’s concept of the “problematic situation” is a core component of his epistemology and his social philosophy, grounding his anti-elitist view of inquiry as initially hunch-guided and aiming toward growth in meaning and control. I consider two novel counterarguments to Dewey’s definition of a situation, the “Cunning Manipulator,” which refutes his delimitation of a problematic situation in terms of qualitative experience, and the “Anxious Compulsion,” in which following one’s hunches causes a downward spiral. Given these challenges, I propose a (...) revised Deweyan epistemology that recognizes the possibility of “qualitative disunity” and of “vigilant inquiry” as a response to it. The concept of “qualitative disunity” sheds light on disagreements on the topic of normativity between classical and neopragmatism. (shrink)