Contemporary societies require citizens and workers to face unexpected challenges. This calls for a shift of emphasis from individualistic competence to the importance of collective intelligence. This article describes a plan for a project in which students who are eight to twelve years old will not only realize that difference is a crucial resource in problem solving and decision making but also live out their personal value as thinking, active beings. They will participate in an online dialogue that takes place (...) among children who attend schools in under-resourced communities and in middle-class and upper-class communities. The students will work on learning units based on philosophical content designed to stimulate their critical ability. The philosophical scenarios will be related to the everyday lives of the children through concrete examples. These examples will be followed by questions that aim to promote the advancement of the students’ thinking skills. (shrink)

This book reconstructs the impact of Plato's words for the modern reader. In the Republic, Plato presented his schematization of human intellectual development, and called for collaboration between writer and reader. The response presented in this book results in a new theoretical framework for engaging with Plato's dialogues. Susanna Saracco analyzes the epistemic function of Plato's written words and explores Plato's higher order pedagogy, in which students are not mere learners and teachers are not the depositories of the truth.

This book analyses the role of diagrammatic reasoning in Plato’s philosophy: the readers will realize that Plato, describing the stages of human cognitive development using a diagram, poses a logic problem to stimulate the general reasoning abilities of his readers. Following the examination of mental models in this book, the readers will reflect on what inferences can be useful to approach this kind of logic problem. Plato calls for a collaboration between writer and readers. In this book the readers will (...) examine the connection between diagrams and discovery, realizing the important epistemic role of visualization. They will recognize the crucial role that diagrams play in problem solving. The logic problem elaborated by Plato is addressed considering the epistemic function of mental models. These models introduce to an advanced stage of cognitive development, in which reasoning uses in its investigations a higher-level of mathematical complexity, represented by structuralism. (shrink)

Plato has devised texts which call the readers to collaborate cognitively with them. An important epistemic stimulation is the schematization, the line segment, which summarizes Plato’s idea of intellectual development. In this research, visual thinking will help us to make the most of the Platonic invitation to investigate further cognitive growth. It will be analyzed how visual discoveries are rendered possible by mental number lines, realizing the epistemological importance of visualization. Thanks to visualization, structuralism will be grasped. It will reveal (...) a connection with Plato’s philosophy which suggests a novel elaboration of the Platonic concept of intellectual growth. (shrink)

Plato has devised texts which call the readers to collaborate cognitively with them. An important epistemic stimulation is the schematization, the line segment, which summarizes Plato’s idea of intellectual development. In this research, visual thinking will help us to make the most of the Platonic invitation to investigate further cognitive growth. It will be analyzed how visual discoveries are rendered possible by mental number lines, realizing the epistemological importance of visualization. Thanks to visualization, structuralism will be grasped. It will reveal (...) a connection with Plato’s philosophy which suggests a novel elaboration of the Platonic concept of intellectual growth. (shrink)

The Platonic description of the cognitive development of the human being is a crucial part of his philosophy. This account emphasizes not only the existence of phases of rational growth but also the need that the cognitive progress of the individuals is investigated further. I will reconstruct what rational growth is for Plato in light of the deliberate choice of the philosopher to leave incomplete his schematization of human intellectual development. I will argue that this is a means chosen by (...) Plato to stimulate his readers to use his text as a starting point for an enquiry into the capabilities of human intellection. I will illustrate the presence of two phases in the process of human rational growth, highlighting the different techniques utilized by Plato to promote cognitive development during each of them. When the individuals are in the first phase of intellectual growth, they are rationally stimulated via conventional discursive material transmitted in written form. Human rational progress at the level of sophistication of theoretical adulthood is promoted through mathematics. (shrink)