The purpose of this text is to draw attention to eight forgotten heroes: William C. Bagley, Charles DeGarmo, David Felmley, William Torrey Harris, Isaac L. Kandel, Charles McMurry, William C. Ruediger, and Edward Austin Sheldon. They have been marginalized from our profession, and drawing upon their legacy is the best hope for restoring the profession of teaching today. This work also includes a chapter at the end of the book entitled "John Dewey's Forgotten Essays." The audience for this book includes: (...) 1) classroom teachers, 2) school administrators, 3) teacher educators, 4) deans and other university administrators, 5) college and university presidents, 6) legislators, 7) historians of education, 8) curriculum specialists, 9) specialists in teacher training, and 10) the general public. (shrink)

In “Revive and Refuse,” Marshall et al. (2024) argue that many individuals who are revived from opioid overdoses have diminished decision-making capacity (DMC), given that so many of them have opio...

This article draws upon the history of teacher education to provide an introduction to 4 competing pedagogical philosophies. These 4 philosophies battled for control over curriculum for teachers during the period from 1890 to 1930. I begin by defining curriculum for teachers to include the liberal, the professional, and the experiential dimensions. Then, I identify 4 interest groups that sought to gain power over curriculum for teachers. I categorize these interest groups as the traditionalists, the integrationists, the technicians, and the (...) romantics. Then, I explain how leading individuals from each interest group answered questions regarding human nature, the purpose of schooling, and curriculum for teachers. Finally, I argue that education schools should revitalize the integrationist tradition within pedagogical philosophy. This view has been forgotten for nearly 50 years, and the profession of teaching has suffered because of it. (shrink)

While reading, and thinking about how to respond to, Willem Drees’s Religion, Science and Naturalism, I was reminded of an earlier dispute between George Santayana and John Dewey about, among other things, how to incorporate religion into a naturalistic world view. Dewey described Santayana’s naturalism as "broken backed" because of his dualistic distinction between the mechanism of nature and the life of the mind and his relegation of religion to the latter, epiphenomenal realm.

John Dewey's A Common Faith is an exercise in cultural innovation. In those lectures Dewey re-works some of the key words from traditional Christianity into vocabulary for what amounts to a new, humanistic, religion. Faith is made to be a matter of devotion to ideals that are imaginatively projected out of goods currently enjoyed. Divinity becomes a function, that of uniting ideals with one another and with actual conditions.

Critical realists would have us believe that representations have a connection to the world, that of truth or reference for example, which is independent of their usefulness to us. They would have us believe further that knowledge about this connection serves to put religion and science in their proper places with respect to one another. This essay raises pragmatic objections to these belief's.

Alvin Plantinga titles the closing chapter of his book Warrant and Proper Function "Is Naturalism Irrational?" He answers that it is. More precisely, he claims that anyone who is aware of the epistemological argument that he presents in this chapter has an unavoidable reason to doubt the combination of naturalism (according to which there is no God as conceived of in traditional theism) and evolutionary theory (according to which our cognitive capabilities are the products of blind processes operating on genetic (...) variations). But then, he says, anyone who still accepts these propositions is irrational because it is irrational to accept a belief for which one knows there are unavoidable reasons to doubt. (shrink)

Pragmatism and critical realism are different vocabularies for talking about the cognitive value of religion and science. Each can be, and has been, used to make the case for cognitive parity between religious and scientific discourse. Critical realism presupposes a particular form of cognitive psychology that entails general skepticism about the external world and forecloses scientific inquiry in the name of a preconceived idea of what the nature of human cognition must be. Thus, of the two, pragmatism is the better (...) vocabulary for fostering mutual understanding between religion and science. (shrink)

The philosopher Michael Ruse accounts for the difference between hypothetical and categorical imperatives, and thus the origin of distinctively moral obligations like that of altruism, in genetic terms. This is part of an attempt to develop a philosophy that takes Darwin seriously by substituting respectable scientific entities, specifically those of evolutionary biology, for suspect theological or philosophical ones, like God or the transcendental ego, as a basis for addressing philosophical questions. Pragmatists take Darwin seriously, but in a very different way (...) from that proposed by Ruse. Darwin introduced a "logic" into the study of living things-including human beings, the human mind, and culture-that leads philosophers to ask new and different questions about morality rather than trying to supply new answers to the same old questions. This essay contrasts these two different ways of taking Darwin seriously for purposes of philosophy and claims certain advantages for the pragmatist way over Ruse's. (shrink)

Nancey Murphy claims that a shift in “thinking strategy” from modern to postmodern modes of thought makes it easier to exhibit the intellectual respectability of theology vis‐à‐vis the sciences. Her case for this proposition depends on modernist interests, most notably in systematizing the sciences for reasons that have their origin in Plato's divided line.

The organizers of the 1992 Highlands Institute seminar were kind enough to invite me to comment as a neo-pragmatist on John E. Smith's keynote paper "Experience, God, and Classical American Philosophy." It is my pleasure to do so. I read portions of both GOD AND EXPERIENCE and THE ANALOGY OF EXPERIENCE when they were published. I was impressed then, and continue to be impressed, with Professor Smith's intellectually responsible and powerful defense of Christianity, carried out, as it was, in a (...) philosophical environment where that was not the most popular thing to do. More recently, in preparation for this event, I have profited from reading THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY, particularly the chapters on James and Dewey. And, I can only second his presidential call in "The New Need for a Recovery of Philosophy" for a live-and-let-live attitude amongst the cacophonous multitude of those of us who call ourselves "philosophers.". (shrink)

William Dean is a tireless proponent of a public role for religion in American society, most recently in his American Academy of Religion award winning book The Religious Critic in American Culture . He writes there about the importance of, and need for, both a common American spiritual culture and public intellectuals who would understand, criticize, and innovatively rework that shared American religion. Dean represents a metaphysical strand of American pragmatism. His thought is rooted in William James’s radical empiricism, Bernard (...) Meland’s and Bernard Loomer’s empirical theology, and Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics. He takes seriously what I will call the problem of cosmic estrangement. The American public religion that he advocates, among other things, is supposed to resolve that problem. Its theoretical core is Dean’s version of Whiteheadian panpsychism, which he calls ontological conventionalism. (shrink)

I will, first, describe my brand of pragmatism. Then, second, I will use it to discuss two beliefs that have played an important role in American religious history, the belief that America is a Christian nation and the belief in religious freedom.

Pragmatism is first and foremost an intellectual self-image. It is a unique way of understanding the mental abilities that distinguish we humans from other living things on earth. The pragmatist description of our mind and its relationship to the rest of the world is a relatively new one. It has its roots in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century work of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. These philosophers, influenced by Darwinian biology among other things, redefined the (...) human mind. (shrink)

We Americans put a lot of stock in ingenuity. We admire people who come up with better mousetraps or with better ways to predict economic cycles. William James, in his early essay "Great Men and Their Environment," was the first American pragmatist to suggest that there are interesting analogies between the roles that ingenious people play in social change and bearers of genetic variations play in biological evolution.(1) He proposed that the categories in terms of which we conduct various cultural (...) activities start as idiosyncratic "brainstorms" in the heads of individual human beings, much as Darwin theorized that species start as genetic variations in ancestral organisms. When these mental variations occur in a suitable environment, they may end as new forms of science, morality, art, or religion. Such new ideas enable their bearers to cope with the world differently, and perhaps more profitably, than their ancestors did before them. Social progress when it occurs is a function of the meliorative power of this fortuitous human creativity, not of anything preprogrammed with its own logic or method. (shrink)

Sheila Davaney’s Pragmatic Historicism provides yet another opportunity for us to discuss disagreements between two kinds of pragmatism. One, which I espouse, is a non-metaphysical pragmatism. It is rooted in James’s and Dewey’s appropriation of Darwinian biology for philosophical purposes and, more recently, Donald Davidson’s philosophy of language. Richard Rorty is its most influential contemporary spokesman. The other is a metaphysical pragmatism. It is rooted in James’s radical empiricism and Whitehead’s process philosophy. In the Highlands Institute, William Dean and now (...) Davaney, among others, advocate versions of metaphysical pragmatism. (shrink)

Often a physician’s first introduction to a patient is not a physical encounter but a review of their chart. A glaring “violence risk” flag in an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is often noticeable...

Events in 2020 have sparked a reimagination of how both individuals and institutions should consider race, power, health, and marginalization in society. In a response to these developments, we exa...

Proposals for how health care ought to be allocated and delivered in the United States have been debated for at least the last 80 years. The last major effort at expanding health-care coverage in the US was the Affordable Care Act, which went into law in 2010. The ACA increased the number of Americans who have medical insurance, but it has nonetheless fallen short of providing universal coverage, and as of 2017, 8.8% of Americans, or 28.5 million, were uninsured. So (...) far, Republican efforts to fully repeal the ACA have failed, but Republican lawmakers have whittled away at crucial elements of the Act (including, importantly, the individual mandate that compels individuals to obtain insurance or... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cognitive Error and Contemplative Practices:The Cultivation of Discernment in Mind and HeartWesley J. WildmanBrains are amazing organs in all creatures with central nervous systems and especially in human beings. But they are not perfect. Without forgetting the larger success story of cognitive evolution, I want to explore the way that cognitive biases sometimes produce errors in both religious and secular social settings and how such errors can be diagnosed (...) and corrected when they occur. This will involve noticing that error diagnosis and correction is a process that certain social groups have a vested interest in resisting or neglecting, in some respects, while the very same social groups may furnish resources that support the detection of cognitive errors, in other respects.This presents a moral quandary for both secular and religious groups. Should we educate children to be fully aware of their cognitive vulnerability to advertising, thereby learning how to resist and eventually become immune to one of the fundamental power sources of modern market economies? Should religious groups explain to young people their cognitive tendencies to posit the action of supernatural beings whether or not any such action exists, even though this may disrupt the power of religious groups to forge bracing social togetherness that supports psychologically useful coping skills? While I do not seek to answer such complex moral questions in this paper, I do argue that knowledge of cognitive biases and the resulting tendencies to cognitive error, self-defeating behaviors, and self-deception should be made available to those individuals and groups who are interested in promoting a high degree of critical self-awareness in the analysis of beliefs and behaviors in both secular and religious contexts.The term "error" is a potentially problematic one in that it misleadingly suggests that there might be a uniquely correct way in which cognition should work. I do not wish to suggest such a binary opposition. After all, biases exist in the human cognitive system either because they have been selected in the evolutionary process for their survival benefits or because they are side effects of other traits selected for their usefulness. My concern is with the wondrous human discovery that we can analyze [End Page 61] our behaviors and beliefs with such precision that we can sometimes detect when our cognitive biases produce mistaken beliefs and self-defeating behaviors. This forms the basis for my contention that cognition can often work better than it does—more accurately, less self-destructively—when tendencies to cognitive error are diagnosed, corrected, and perhaps even systematically resisted.The profound irony here is that the very same social groups (secular and religious) with an obvious vested interest in resisting such enlightenment in some respects can also promote processes of discernment and insight in other respects. Existing literature in the cognitive psychology of religion rarely bothers with such subtleties. It is common to assume that simply to notice the operation of cognitive biases in religion—say, in supporting belief in supernatural entities who providentially interact in human affairs, or in establishing and reinforcing people's willingness to defer to certain kinds of religious authority—is at the same time to establish the presence of rampant cognitive error, massive resistance to diagnosing and correcting it, and thus the infliction of pernicious cruelties on young children who have no way of escaping the resulting irrational indoctrination.This moral reflex to condemn religious groups because of their characteristic reluctance to acknowledge the role of cognitive biases in their beliefs and practices is understandable given the irrationality, ignorance, or denial that such reluctance suggests. I frankly acknowledge that I share this moral concern. But the actual complexities of religious practice demonstrate that the situation demands a subtler evaluation. Resistance to awareness of cognitive biases exists both inside and outside religious groups; economic and political practices in all eras and of all types have every bit as much to gain from neglecting to enlighten people about their cognitive operations as religious groups do—just consider the techniques employed in commercial advertising and political campaigns. Moreover, religious groups also promote methods of discernment and self-awareness that have historically been, and continue to be, the dominant method by which... (shrink)

The events of 2020 have shaken the core of bioethics in a way that we hope will pave a new and equitable, though perhaps uncomfortable, path forward. We would like to thank those who responded to o...

The ethical question is whether university mask mandates should be relaxed. I argue that the use of face masks by healthy individuals has uncertain benefits, which potential harms may outweigh, and should therefore be voluntary. Systematic reviews by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections concluded that the use of face masks by healthy individuals in the community lacks effectiveness in reducing viral transmission based on moderate-quality evidence. The only two randomized controlled trials of face masks published (...) during the pandemic found little to no benefit. Without high-quality evidence, it is difficult to justify a requirement rather than a recommendation. Notwithstanding, one might argue that the precautionary principle justifies mask mandates. If the precautionary principle can justify implementing mask mandates due to the risk of forgoing possible benefit, then it might also be able to justify not implementing mask mandates due to the risk of potential harm caused by the intervention. It is commonly thought that there is little to lose from the use of face masks, but this is not necessarily true. It is possible that masks have done more harm than good. (shrink)

Drawing from Goffman’s original observations on stigma and the consequences of interactions between the stigmatized and supportive or stigmatizing audiences, we conduct a 20-year review of the diverse literature on stigma to revisit the collective nature of stigmatization processes. We find that studies on stigma’s origins, responses, processes, and outcomes have diverged from Goffman’s relational view of stigma as they have overlooked important relational mechanisms explaining the processes of (de)stigmatization. We draw from those conclusions to justify the need to study (...) stigma as a collective phenomenon. We develop a relational perspective on stigma based on understanding how attributes are stigmatized (or not) by audiences in their interactions. We argue that to advance stigma research, it is necessary to build on Goffman’s theory to include the stigmatizers (i.e., the normal) and supporters (i.e., the wise); how they create, sustain, or remove stigma; and how they relate to the stigmatized (i.e., the targets). Accordingly, we provide a research agenda on stigma as a collective phenomenon that theorizes a relational perspective, proposes a typology of how audiences relate to stigmatization, and identifies patterns of relations between audiences. We thus offer a missing piece to existing accounts of stigma by focusing on the key role of audiences (i.e., stigmatizers or supporters of the stigmatized) rather than on the targets of stigma (i.e., the own). (shrink)

Smith believe that granting "rights" to animals would inevitably diminish human dignity.

For children, the collateral damage of the COVID-19 pandemic response has been considerable. In this paper, we use the framework of evidence-based medicine to argue that child abuse is another negative side effect of COVID-19 lockdowns. While it was certain that school closures would have profound social and economic costs, it remains uncertain whether they have any effect on COVID-19 transmission. There is emerging evidence that lockdowns significantly worsened child abuse on a global scale. Low-income and middle-income countries are particularly (...) vulnerable to increases in child abuse. The best available external evidence from systematic research during the pandemic demonstrates an increase in the risk of child maltreatment, an increase in child maltreatment hospitalisations and a concerning decrease in official child maltreatment referrals. The paradoxical phenomenon of increased hospitalisations and decreased reports is unlikely to be explained by a genuine decrease in child abuse. We conclude that lockdowns have an unacceptably high risk of negative side effects for children, as evidenced by child abuse, the true extent of which appears to be masked by lockdown-related disruptions to schools and other surveillance systems. The desire for a sense of security may be a tempting bias towards emphasising the resilience of children, but it is ethically problematic to push children towards abuse in the name of public health. It is our view that the collateral damage of prolonged school closures for society’s most vulnerable members is a powerful ethical consideration against any pandemic response which involves their use. (shrink)