Este trabajo ha sido seleccionado de entre los participantes de la VI Olimpiada de Filosofía que organiza FICUM en la modalidad de secundaria y bachillerato, para promocionar la filosofía entre los jóvenes.

Textual evidence preserved in two still unpublished manuscripts strongly suggests that there once existed an alternative version of Miskawayh’s Fawz al-aṣghar, the Minor Book of Triumph. The article discusses possible explanations for why Miskawayh may have composed two recensions of his Fawz and compares structure and content of the alternative version with the edited standard version. The one passage which is contained in the alternative Fawz only is presented in Arabic with an English translation. Part of this additional material is (...) parallel to al-Fārābī’s Iḥṣā’ al-‘ulūm, namely its division of natural sciences, and may ultimately derive from a no longer extant treatise by Paul the Persian. An appendix provides the Arabic text and English translation of a hitherto unknown fragment of al-Balkhī in which he discusses Plato’s saying that the world has a causative, but no temporal beginning. (shrink)

This chapter introduces W.E.B. Du Bois’s original political thought and his strategies for political advocacy. It is limited to explaining the pressure he puts on the liberal social contract tradition, which prioritizes the public values of freedom and equality for establishing fair and inclusive terms of political membership. However, unlike most liberal theorists, Du Bois’s political thought concentrates on the politics of race, colonialism, gender, and labor, among other themes, in order to redefine how political theorists and activists should build (...) a democratic polity that is truly free and equal for all. Additionally, this chapter defines some key concepts Du Bois developed to scrutinize a white-controlled world that does not welcome black and brown persons as moral equals. These trailblazing concepts include: the doctrine of racialism, double consciousness, and Pan-Africanism. Finally, this chapter defends Du Bois’s contributions to black feminist thought and American labor politics, which inspired major social justice movements in the twentieth century, in which he played a notable role. (shrink)

Elvira Mayordomo and Wolfgang Merkle The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 135-136, March 2013.

Nowadays, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is present in all sectors of the economy. Consequently, both data-the raw material used to build AI systems- and AI have an unprecedented impact on society and there is a need to ensure that they work for its benefit. For this reason, the European Union has put data and trustworthy AI at the center of recent legislative initiatives. An important element in these regulations is transparency, understood as the provision of information to relevant stakeholders to support (...) their understanding of AI systems and data throughout their lifecycle. In recent years, an increasing number of approaches for documenting AI and datasets have emerged, both within academia and the private sector. In this work, we identify the 36 most relevant ones from more than 2200 papers related to trustworthy AI. We assess their relevance from the angle of European regulatory objectives, their coverage of AI technologies and economic sectors, and their suitability to address the specific needs of multiple stakeholders. Finally, we discuss the main documentation gaps found, including the need to better address data innovation practices (e.g. data sharing, data reuse) and large-scale algorithmic systems (e.g. those used in online platforms), and to widen the focus from algorithms and data to AI systems as a whole. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 13.1 (2005) 37-75 [Access article in PDF] The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education Elvira Panaiotidi North Ossetian State Pedagogical Institute, Russia The advent of the praxial philosophy of music education in the mid-1990s and its systematic development in David Elliott's Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education1 created an unprecedented situation in music education in North America. Having (...) brought to an end the monopoly of one theoretical approach, that of music education as aesthetic education (MEAE), it challenged the music education community with a choice. While Elliott tried to convince music educators of the falsity of MEAE and of the advantages of his own conception, Bennett Reimer and his proponents defended their position. The polemic between "aestheticians" and "praxialists," represented by the exchange between Reimer and Elliott in the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 2 brought to light a methodological deficiency in music education theory, namely, its inability to provide tenacious theoretical footing which could help settle the dispute. How do changes in the theory and practice [End Page 37] of music education occur? What are the rational standards by which to judge theories? What is the nature and logic of a dynamic development in music education theory and practice? These and similar questions have remained largely unapproached by music educators.The present paper is an attempt to initiate a discussion on these issues by exposing one possible metatheoretical strategy. As the title suggests, the strategy I am going to employ is based on the concept of paradigm. This Greek term which was once used to describe Platonic ideas, nowadays broadly circulates in descriptions of transformative processes in nearly every domain of life: we hear about paradigm shifts in musicology, the job market and tax policy, genetics, and so on. It is usually used as a kind of unproblematic category with a precisely defined and commonly accepted meaning, so that no indication of the origin of its usage in a given context is provided. In most cases, however, it turns out that "paradigm shift" is equivalent to and stands for "change" of whatever type, scope, or depth and is preferred because it is a mode or perhaps because it sounds more pretentious. In contrast to this tendency, both "paradigm" and "paradigm shift" are taken here most seriously and their usage is intimately related to the tradition in philosophy of science established by Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.3 This may appear dubious after we have been recently told that the impact of this book and the very concept of paradigm have "been largely, but not entirely, for the worse," namely, "to dull the critical sensibility of the academy" and "to kill the historicist impulse."4 "Kuhnification," it has been argued, is responsible for the suppression of free inquiry and bringing about "paradigmitis," a syndrome characterized by "a collective sense of historical amnesia and political inertia."5 Nonetheless, it is my contention that the paradigm approach per se is not dismissed by the criticism of Kuhn's conception and can be modified in such a way as to be made fruitful for structuring music education discourse and the explication of theory development in music education. To show how this is possible is the task before me.Underlying this project is the idea that theory development in music education can be adequately grasped and appraised in terms of more general units than specific theories which I shall call paradigms. That I am giving preference to this term and not choosing another from the group of providers of the conceptual framework that have been suggested throughout the history—"research tradition" (Laudan), "research programme"(Lakatos), "comprehensive cosmological point of view" (Feyerabend)—is that I find it more pertinent: it is neutral enough and allows for modifications which are necessary in view of the specific nature of music education discourse.In what follows, I will begin with an examination of Peter Abbs' account of paradigms and paradigm shifts in arts education. I... (shrink)

Elvira Schnabel; Wittgenstein on Rules: what follows and what does not, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 25, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 83–94, https.

This chapter contains sections titled: Ortega's Thought and the Spanish Philosophical Emigration to Latin America Ortega's Influence in Latin America References Further Reading.

This article addresses the general ethical issues of accessing online personal data for research purposes. The authors discuss the practical aspects of online research with a specific case study that illustrates the ethical challenges encountered when accessing data from Kooth, an online youth web-counselling service. This paper firstly highlights the relevance of a process-based approach to ethics when accessing highly sensitive data and then discusses the ethical considerations and potential challenges regarding the accessing of public data from Digital Mental Health (...) services. It presents solutions that aim to protect young DMH service users as well as the DMH providers and researchers mining such data. Special consideration is given to service users’ expectations of what their data might be used for, as well as their perceptions of whether the data they post is public, private or open. We provide recommendations for planning and designing online research that includes vulnerable young people as research participants in an ethical manner. We emphasise the distinction between public, private and open data, which is crucial to comprehend the ethical challenges in accessing DMH data. Among our key recommendations, we foreground the need to consider a collaborative approach with the DMH providers while respecting service users’ control over personal data, and we propose the implementation of digital solutions embedded within the platform for explicit opt-out/opt-in recruitment strategies and ‘read more’ options. (shrink)

Krausists followed a dialectical method in all their activities. It is an action plan in which theory and practice are established on a continuum. Since it summarizes all human activity, this dialectic implies a philosophy of action. The originality of this article lies precisely in offering an account of the philosophy of action implicit in the work of Krause, which has never before been made explicit. Therefore, the goal of this article is, on the one hand, to isolate this dialectic (...) in the texts of the Spanish Krausists, and, on the other hand, to demonstrate the traditional affirmation about the practical meaning of Krause’s philosophy, as shown in its Spanish version. This practical orientation of his thought was channelled through several disciplines and, especially, through the modern pedagogy known as active education. Throughout the article, I also show how to relate Krause’s philosophy to contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

The article presents an analysis of the two-century development of the Russian intelligentsia, traces the transformation of views and ideas due to historical and socio-cultural foundations. The Russian intelligentsia is regarded as a very special phenomenon in the world, whose historical significance and basic idea are determined by the relationship with the state. It is proved that the main driving force of the development of the Russian intelligentsia changed depending on the political and ideological regime. Much attention is paid in (...) the article to the understanding of the phenomenon of the Russian intelligentsia in the present reality, traditional and acquired features in this historical period are considered. Its role in the formation of value orientations of modern society is analyzed. The author suggests that in the post-reform Russia of the XXI century there is no conceptual unity in the awareness of the "Russian intelligentsia". The intelligentsia itself to a greater extent today does not see itself as a recognized and clearly defined social group, its self-consciousness is fragmented and contradictory. The conclusion is made that the ideological form of the Russian intelligentsia was and remains its alienation from the state and hostility to it, brought up on abstract enlightenment schemes supplemented by cosmopolitanism and globalization, the modern intellectual continues to suffer from the lack of a healthy national identity. Today, when time dictates the need to move to a fundamentally new type of civilizational development, where the key question of the values that set the guidelines for this transition arises again, it is the intelligentsia, as a generator of the thought field, as two centuries ago, can play a major role. (shrink)

The article carries out a critical analysis of Arthur Kiefer's methodology (described in the “Ecclesiastes and the meaning of life in the ancient world”, Cambridge University Press, 2022), namely his concept of “meaning of life” applied to the analysis of the book of Ecclesiastes. The core argument made here is that the “threefold conceptual scheme” of the meaning of life, borrowed from the field of empirical psychological research (coherence – purpose – significance), cannot be effective in the analysis of theological (...) or philosophical texts, which involve a high level of generalization. On the other hand, since the concept of “meaning of life” is absent from the language of Ecclesiastes and other ancient texts, and its own meaning is extremely vague, it is unable to play the role of a useful analytical tool. (shrink)

The article analyses whether it is correct to extrapolate the concept of "meaning in life" developed by Thaddeus Metz to the doctrines of ancient philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas. Is Metz’ concept of "purposes" that make "human life" meaningful analogous to Aquinas’ concept of "ultimate goal of man"? Significant points of Metz’ conception of "meaning in life" in our article are described and compared with Aquinas’ conception of "ultimate goal of man." As it turns out, these conceptions are only superficially similar. (...) In fact, they are profoundly different: (1) Aquinas is talking about the "goal of man", which implies objective teleology incompatible with Metz’ "naturalism", and is not talking about "meaning in life" (and even "purpose of life"); (2) "ultimate goal of man", for Aquinas, is intended to provide salvation and eternal life for man, not to make life "significant" in this world. -/- Thus, Metz and Thomas not only use different terminology, but also address different problems. They deal with different questions, not just give different answers to the same question (about the "meaning in life"). Metz’s extrapolation may be correct, when viewed as a kind of rational reconstruction. However, Metz does not make appropriate reservations and groundlessly unifies heterogeneous problems. The article shows that more historically oriented methodology avoids impropriety in the exercise of rational reconstruction of "meaning in life" in the field of ancient and medieval philosophies. (shrink)

To highlight the promise of Jordan Pascoe’s Kant’s Theory of Labour, my comments concern the diagnostic and prescriptive dimensions of the book’s excellent intersectional critique of dependent labour relations. The diagnostic dimension of Pascoe’s critique establishes that the organisation of dependent labour relations is a neglected problem of Kantian justice. The prescriptive dimension offers solutions to this problem but is underdeveloped. To enhance the book’s prescriptive dimension, I draw on the noted Africana philosopher W. E. B. Du Bois for guidance. (...) For Du Bois, a constitutional republic ought to strive for the abolition of a ‘second’ slavery following the abolition of de jure black chattel slavery with the end of the American Civil War. Given Du Bois’ call for meaningful Emancipation, I argue that philosophers should reinterpret the Kantian normative ideal of freedom as universal independence to uproot the postbellum conditions of second slavery. (shrink)

This essay argues that a black radical Kantianism proposes a Kantian theory of justice in the circumstances of injustice. First, I describe BRK’s method of political critique and explain how it builds on Kant’s republicanism. Second, I argue that Kant’s original account of public right is incomplete because it neglects that a situated citizenry’s adoption of an ideal contributes to its refinement. Lastly, with the aid of W.E.B. Du Bois’s analysis of American Reconstruction and his proposal of an “abolition democracy,” (...) I offer my refined universalizable standard for political critique. Du Bois reconceptualizes the requirements of justice to protect the political liberties and productive powers of black freedmen and the working poor. While originating with the political demands of black freedmen during the Reconstruction era, the universal protection of political liberties and productive powers offers a novel public standard for political judgment that should still anchor deliberation today. (shrink)

This essay develops Kant’s theory of reform to theorize racial justice reform. I assess the function of Kant’s philosophy of race as part of his nonideal theory of justice, which offers a racist pragmatic anthropology that uses the concept of race to determine the practical effectiveness of legislative reason. His philosophy of race defends a teleological account of the natural history of the human species to fulfill the requirements of justice and assumes that certain racial groups have failed to develop (...) their innate capacity for legislative reason. I show that we need an alternative Kantian nonideal theory of justice that demonstrates how legislative reason actualizes practical freedom. Rather than appeal to anthropology, I expand Kant’s model of public reason to advance racial justice reform under the conditions of partial compliance to the requirements of justice in a profoundly nonideal republic such as the U.S. I then showcase the promise—and limits—of the a priori ideals of citizenship and publicity for racial justice reform and introduce the ideal of interracial civic fellowship to guide the public use of reason in nonideal circumstances. (shrink)

The starting point of this work is the existence of historical paradoxes in the set theory. These are: Russell's paradox, applied to the set W, Cantor's, for the set U, and Burali-Forti's, of the set Omega. A systematic analysis aimed at the simplification and the refining of such paradoxes showed that: there exist at least eight contradictory expressions instead of three; another contradictory set is suggested by an extension of Burali-Forti's paradox; almost all of the contradictions apply to more than (...) one paradoxical set. (shrink)

This article concerns a phenomenon of elementary quantum mechanics that is quite counter-intuitive, very non-classical, and apparently not widely known: a quantum particle can get reflected at a potential step downwards. In contrast, classical particles get reflected only at upward steps. As a consequence, a quantum particle can be trapped for a long time (though not forever) in a region surrounded by downward potential steps, that is, on a plateau. Said succinctly, a quantum particle tends not to fall off a (...) table. The conditions for this effect are that the wave length is much greater than the width of the potential step and the kinetic energy of the particle is much smaller than the depth of the potential step. We point out how the topic is accessible with elementary methods, but also with mathematical rigor and numerically. (shrink)

The Future of the World Is Open examines the work and thought of three prominent Italian feminist philosophers, Lea Melandri, Luisa Muraro, and Adriana Cavarero, as it delves into the significant experiences that shaped them, highlighting their converging and diverging positions. Also appearing here for the first time in English translation are three essays by renowned author, journalist, and political figure Rossana Rossanda. Rossanda's essays offer a critical perspective on some of the contentious theoretical nodes with which Italian feminist thought (...) has wrestled. Written in terse and engaging language, this book explores challenging philosophical and political questions, with themes including masculine domination; the body as the site of sedimented lived experience; sexual difference; the symbolic; the imaginary; feminine political authority; feminine subjectivity; and material humanism. A vivid picture of the socio-political context of Italian feminism emerges—illuminating its strong commitment to practice—and informing and enriching contemporary discussions at the intersection of different disciplinary perspectives. (shrink)

This essay aims to explore imitation in social contexts. The argument that summarizes my claim is that the perception of other people’s behaviour conditions the agent in imitating that behaviour, as evidence from social psychology holds :893–910, 1999; Bargh and Ferguson in Psychol Bull 126:925–945, 2000; Bargh and Ferguson in Trends Cogn Sci 8:33–39, 2004), but what the agent perceives and experiences becomes potential motives for her actions only through her identification with a particular way of being and acting. Therefore, (...) although the agent’s actions are conditioned by perceptual stimuli, the latter are not the cause of the actions. The agent is the ultimate cause. That is, a convergence between perceptual stimuli and conscious will. I take this latter conclusion to suggest a compatibilist approach whereby action in a social situation would require the perceptual conditioning as much as the freedom and consciousness of the agent. (shrink)

This article applies Charles W. Mills’ notion of the domination contract to develop a Kantian theory of justice. The concept of domination underlying the domination contract is best understood as structural domination, which unjustifiably authorizes institutions and labour practices to weaken vulnerable groups’ public standing as free, equal and independent citizens. Though Kant’s theory of justice captures why structural domination of any kind contradicts the requirements of justice, it neglects to condemn exploitive gender- and race-based labour relations. Because the ideal (...) of civic equality must position all persons as co-legislators of the terms of political rule, the state must dismantle exploitive race- and gender-based labour relations for all persons to command political power as civic equals. (shrink)

Using a sample of 124 managers and 248 subordinates, this study examines the mediating effect of subordinates’ job satisfaction in the relationship between ethical leadership and subordinate organizational citizenship and counter-productive work behaviour in the Colombian context. We additionally analyse the effect of ethical leadership on subordinates’ perception of leaders’ performance. Factor analyses of the ethical leadership scale revealed two factors, ethical person and ethical guidance, which were differentially associated to the outcomes. We offer an explanation from three cultural dimensions (...) by which Colombian employees seem to be more willing to follow leaders’ ethical example as a way to strengthen their membership to the leader's group, than leaders ethical disciplining by which norms are imposed. These findings have a number of implications for organizations and managers who aim to improve their employees’ behaviour. Our advice to them is that leaders’ deeds have a greater impact than their ethical words. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I draw on W.E.B. Du Bois’s political thought to challenge de Shalit’s characterization of the role of the philosopher and the public in political theory. I press three issues to clarify what it would take for a political philosopher to take into consideration what the public thinks: the relation of the method of public reflective equilibrium to history and the empirical sciences; the moral education that results from the public’s participation in philosophical discussions; and how political philosophers should handle (...) the public’s recalcitrant ignorance and hostility in their theories. (shrink)

Vor dem Hintergrund von Heinrich Wölfflins Kunstgeschichtlichen Grundbegriffen (1915) untersucht der Beitrag anhand kennerschaftlicher und formalistischer Forschungsansätze des 20. Jahrhunderts die Verwendung von Metaphern für die Beschreibung von graphischen Kunstwerken. Mittels musikalischer und anthropomorpher Begriffe wird gezeigt, wie sich insbesondere Metaphern mehr als andere sprachliche Mittel oder Begrifflichkeiten je nach methodischer Ausrichtung für Argumentationen vereinnahmen ließen und Konnotationen entsprechend wechseln konnten. Zugleich eignet ihnen ein besonderes rezeptionsästhetisches Potenzial, mit dem Kunstwerke scheinbar ›intuitiver‹ erfasst werden können.

El objetivo del presente artículo es esclarecer el valor de la noción de historia en la obra de Gilles Deleuze a partir de su relación con la historia de la filosofía. Esta propuesta es realizada a partir del análisis de los diferentes estilos que para la escritura filosófica ensayó y tematizó el filósofo francés como modo de reinterpretar el canon de la filosofía. Dicha estrategia, en Deleuze, supone perseguir el sentido interno del estilo en la filosofía y su vinculación con (...) la noción de historia a través de un régimen de signos diferente al del ámbito de la representación. Desde esta perspectiva, nuestra investigación recorre la comprensión de la historia a partir de la categoría de producción en tanto que historia de lo contingente y nos obliga a repensar el tiempo y la naturaleza de los acontecimientos históricos, con especial atención a la revolución. (shrink)

The clinical empiricism of Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) and his definition of especie morbosae represented a substantial turn in the medicine of his time. This turn supposed the shift towards an ontological conception of diseases, from a qualitative to quantitative interpretation. Sydenham’s clinical proposal had a great influence on empiricism philosophical thinking, particularly in John Locke and his delimitation of knowledge. The dialogue between medicine and philosophy, set out by Sydenham-Locke, reactivates the problem of the clinical and theoretical foundations of medical (...) thought, as well as the limits of scientific knowledge. Similar to problem exposed in the Hippocratic treatise On ancient medicine, seventeenth-century medicine seeks its epistemological foundations and the solution to its difficulties in clinical experience, probability and analogy. The aim of this work is to show the Sydenham’s contribution to one of the great controversies between medicine and philosophy. (shrink)

This volume presents the first complete edition of Oxford, MS Marsh 539, a hitherto unpublished philosophy reader compiled anonymously in the eastern Islamic world in the eleventh century. The compilation consists of texts on metaphysics, physiology and ethics, providing excerpts from Arabic versions of Greek philosophical works and works by Arabic authors. It preserves fragments of Greek-Arabic translations lost today, including Galen's On My Own Opinions, the Summa Alexandrinorum, and Themistius on Aristotle's Book Lambda. The philosophy reader provides a unique (...) insight into philosophical activity of the place and time of the well-known philosopher Miskawayh, showing us which works had entered the mainstream and were considered necessary for philosophers to know. Elvira Wakelnig's volume includes a new facing-page English translation and a rich commentary which identifies the source texts and examines the historical and philosophical context of each passage. (shrink)

I argue that chimericity is a property that we typically experience when listening to multi-instrumental music. It is the property of hearing as a unified whole a melody or a harmony that does not belong to any single sound source but instead consists of the assembling of melodic or harmonic fragments coming from different sources. Chimericity is not reducible to the low-level audible properties of pitch and loudness; it is cognized at the perceptual level thanks to the auditory mechanism of (...) primitive grouping. My aim is to show that chimericity is a perceptual property, one that we can genuinely hear. In developing this view, I engage with the debate within the philosophy of sense perception between rich vs thin views of the content of perceptual experience. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Hegel’s model of ethical life is normatively gripping for Du Bois’s critique of Radical Reconstruction. My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I use Du Bois’s insights to explain the nature of progressive political change in historical time, an account Hegel lacks. I reconstruct the normative basis of Du Bois's political critique by articulating the three essential features of public reasoning qua citizenship. Second, I defend the promise of black civic enfranchisement with respect to (...) the institutional conditions of love and labour in the wake of the Civil War. Third, I establish the central role black freedmen played in realizing the ideals of democratic self-governance affirmed in principle but seldom realized in practice in the United States. (shrink)

Forms of Life and Subjectivity: Rethinking Sartre's Philosophy explores the fundamental question of why we act as we do. Informed by an ontological and phenomenological approach, and building mainly, but not exclusively, on the thought of Sartre, Daniel Rueda Garrido considers the concept of a ""form of life"" as a term that bridges the gap between subjective identity and communities.

¿Cuál es el origen último de la religiosidad humana? En estas épocas de cientificismo e ilimitado pragmatismo, en estos días en los que Dios parece bien muerto y aún mejor enterrado ¿hay algún motivo sensato y legítimo para reconocer una dimensión religiosa de la existencia? ¿Y qué es lo que distingue una existencia auténticamente religiosa de aquella otra que cree serlo y, sin embargo, no lo es? ¿No son, acaso, el modo de orar y de realizar la propia vida en (...) la esfera ética, social y política lo que permite reconocer esa autenticidad? Estas preguntas fundamentales, tratadas en el contexto de la filosofía dialógica y de la fenomenología, movieron el pensamiento de uno de los filósofos de la religión más profundos de nuestros días: Bernhard Casper. Este libro le rinde homenaje al que durante tantos años dirigió la Cátedra de filosofía de la religión en la Universidad de Friburgo. Le rinde, ante todo, homenaje a la hospitalidad de su pensamiento, retomando aquellos interrogantes que han signado su obra. El tributo lo lleva a cabo un grupo de calificados especialistas, colegas y discípulos del propio Casper, de Europa y Argentina, bajo la dirección del Prof. Dr. Ángel E. Garrido-Maturano. Se trata de un instrumento valioso para todos aquellos que se interesen por los problemas acuciantes de la filosofía de la religión actual y quieran comprender lúcidamente qué significa el difícil término "religión". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 13.1 (2005) 37-75 [Access article in PDF] The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education Elvira Panaiotidi North Ossetian State Pedagogical Institute, Russia The advent of the praxial philosophy of music education in the mid-1990s and its systematic development in David Elliott's Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education1 created an unprecedented situation in music education in North America. Having (...) brought to an end the monopoly of one theoretical approach, that of music education as aesthetic education (MEAE), it challenged the music education community with a choice. While Elliott tried to convince music educators of the falsity of MEAE and of the advantages of his own conception, Bennett Reimer and his proponents defended their position. The polemic between "aestheticians" and "praxialists," represented by the exchange between Reimer and Elliott in the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 2 brought to light a methodological deficiency in music education theory, namely, its inability to provide tenacious theoretical footing which could help settle the dispute. How do changes in the theory and practice [End Page 37] of music education occur? What are the rational standards by which to judge theories? What is the nature and logic of a dynamic development in music education theory and practice? These and similar questions have remained largely unapproached by music educators.The present paper is an attempt to initiate a discussion on these issues by exposing one possible metatheoretical strategy. As the title suggests, the strategy I am going to employ is based on the concept of paradigm. This Greek term which was once used to describe Platonic ideas, nowadays broadly circulates in descriptions of transformative processes in nearly every domain of life: we hear about paradigm shifts in musicology, the job market and tax policy, genetics, and so on. It is usually used as a kind of unproblematic category with a precisely defined and commonly accepted meaning, so that no indication of the origin of its usage in a given context is provided. In most cases, however, it turns out that "paradigm shift" is equivalent to and stands for "change" of whatever type, scope, or depth and is preferred because it is a mode or perhaps because it sounds more pretentious. In contrast to this tendency, both "paradigm" and "paradigm shift" are taken here most seriously and their usage is intimately related to the tradition in philosophy of science established by Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.3 This may appear dubious after we have been recently told that the impact of this book and the very concept of paradigm have "been largely, but not entirely, for the worse," namely, "to dull the critical sensibility of the academy" and "to kill the historicist impulse."4 "Kuhnification," it has been argued, is responsible for the suppression of free inquiry and bringing about "paradigmitis," a syndrome characterized by "a collective sense of historical amnesia and political inertia."5 Nonetheless, it is my contention that the paradigm approach per se is not dismissed by the criticism of Kuhn's conception and can be modified in such a way as to be made fruitful for structuring music education discourse and the explication of theory development in music education. To show how this is possible is the task before me.Underlying this project is the idea that theory development in music education can be adequately grasped and appraised in terms of more general units than specific theories which I shall call paradigms. That I am giving preference to this term and not choosing another from the group of providers of the conceptual framework that have been suggested throughout the history—"research tradition" (Laudan), "research programme"(Lakatos), "comprehensive cosmological point of view" (Feyerabend)—is that I find it more pertinent: it is neutral enough and allows for modifications which are necessary in view of the specific nature of music education discourse.In what follows, I will begin with an examination of Peter Abbs' account of paradigms and paradigm shifts in arts education. I... (shrink)