Argument mapping is a way of diagramming the logical structure of an argument to explicitly and concisely represent reasoning. The use of argument mapping in critical thinking instruction has increased dramatically in recent decades. This paper overviews the innovation and provides a procedural approach for new teaches wanting to use argument mapping in the classroom. A brief history of argument mapping is provided at the end of this paper.

We provide a battery of examples of delusions against which theoretical accounts can be tested. Then, we identify neuropsychological anomalies that could produce the unusual experiences that may lead, in turn, to the delusions in our battery. However, we argue against Maher’s view that delusions are false beliefs that arise as normal responses to anomalous experiences. We propose, instead, that a second factor is required to account for the transition from unusual experience to delusional belief. The second factor in the (...) aetiology of delusions can be described superficially as a loss of the ability to reject a candidate for belief on the grounds of its implausibility and its inconsistency with everything else that the patient knows. But we point out some problems that confront any attempt to say more about the nature of this second factor. (shrink)

Over the past forty years, the health humanities, previously called the medical humanities, has emerged as one of the most exciting fields for interdisciplinary scholarship, advancing humanistic inquiry into bioethics, human rights, health care, and the uses of technology. It has also helped inspire medical practitioners to engage in deeper reflection about the human elements of their practice. In _Health Humanities Reader_, editors Therese Jones, Delese Wear, and Lester D. Friedman have assembled fifty-four leading scholars, educators, artists, and clinicians (...) to survey the rich body of work that has already emerged from the field—and to imagine fresh approaches to the health humanities in these original essays. The collection’s contributors reflect the extraordinary diversity of the field, including scholars from the disciplines of disability studies, history, literature, nursing, religion, narrative medicine, philosophy, bioethics, medicine, and the social sciences. With warmth and humor, critical acumen and ethical insight, _Health Humanities Reader_ truly humanizes the field of medicine. Its accessible language and broad scope offers something for everyone from the experienced medical professional to a reader interested in health and illness. (shrink)

Die Reihe Patristische Texte und Studien publiziert seit 1963 Forschungsergebnisse, die durch die Patristische Kommission, heute ein Gemeinschaftsunternehmen aller deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften, koordiniert werden. In ihr erscheinen Editionen, Kommentare und Monographien zu den Schriften und Lehren der Kirchenväter.

Mankind's constant struggle with physical as well as mental weaknesses is omnipresent in ancient literature: misconduct, wrongdoing, failure and experiences of contingency are anthropological phenomena. Ancient ethics, epistemology, and natural philosophy have developed different theoretical approaches and guidelines on how to act and how to overcome all kinds of problems. Christian theology, on the other hand, has explained moral failure as a symptom of original sin, comparing decline and destruction to a burden from which mankind is relieved only at the (...) end. The contributions explore how ancient philosophical texts, both pagan and Christian, explain, conceptualize and integrate the myriad manifestations of human fallibility into the different philosophical schools. The focus is on anthropological, ontological and theological concepts that analyse and reflect human fallibility, as well as on the textual and linguistic representation of the phenomenon in ancient literature. Several contributions in the volume explore literary texts that discuss or illustrate the philosophical dimension of fallibility, such as satire's or tragedy's (often exaggerated) depiction of human weakness. (shrink)

What is critical thinking, especially in the context of higher education? How have research and scholarship on the matter developed over recent past decades? What is the current state of the art here? How might the potential of critical thinking be enhanced? What kinds of teaching are necessary in order to realize that potential? And just why is this topic important now? These are the key questions motivating this volume. We hesitate to use terms such as “comprehensive” or “complete” or (...) “definitive,” but we believe that, taken in the round, the chapters in this volume together offer a fair insight into the contemporary understandings of higher education worldwide. We also believe that this volume is much needed, and we shall try to justify that claim in this introduction. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest Western philosphers and one of the greatest theologians of the Christian church. In this book we at last have a modern, comprehensive presentation of the total thought of Aquinas. Books on Aquinas invariably deal with either his philosophy or his theology. But Aquinas himself made no arbitrary division between his philosophical and his theological thought, and this book allows readers to see him as a whole. It introduces the full range of Aquinas' thinking; (...) and it relates his thinking to writers both earlier and later than Aquinas himself. (shrink)

Novelty—the value of saying something new—appears to be a good-making feature of a philosophical contribution. Beyond this, however, novelty functions as a metric of success. This paper challenges the presumption and expectation that a successful philosophical contribution will be a novel one. As I show, the pursuit of novelty is neither as desirable nor as feasible as it might initially seem.

In this paper, I defend the agent/patient distinction against critics who argue that causal interactions are symmetrical. Specifically, I argue that there is a widespread type of causal interaction between distinct entities, resulting in a type of ontological asymmetry that provides principled grounds for distinguishing agents from patients. The type of interaction where the asymmetry is found is when one of the entities undergoes a change in kind, structure, powers, or intrinsic properties as a result of the interaction while the (...) other does not. Interactions of this type are widespread in molecular biology and chemistry. I focus specifically on (i) the actions of enzymes on substrates and (ii) water molecules breaking the bonds of polarized molecules. Finally, I respond to objections by laying out and to a limited extent defending three commitments of my account: emergent entities and powers, realism about chemical kinds or structures, and the assumption of the agent/patient distinction in functional attributions in biology. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Harmonial Philosophy: A Compendium and Digest of the Works of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Seer of Poughkeepsie His Natural and Divine Revelations, Great Harmonia, Spiritual Inter course, Answers to ever-recurring Questions, Inner Life, Summer. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst (...) repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

What is it about the nature of "soul" that makes it so difficult to adequately capture its complexity in a strictly discursive account? Why do some of the most profound human experiences elude our attempts to theorize them? How can a written document do justice to the dynamic activity of thinking, as opposed to merely presenting a collection of thoughts-as-artifacts? Finally, what can we learn about the activity of philosophizing, and about the human soul, by reflecting on the possibilities and (...) limitations of writing? These concerns, in various forms and in different registers, have preoccupied Michael Davis throughout his distinguished career. This volume is in honor of, and in dialogue with, Davis's work, which spans ancient philosophy and literature, continental philosophy and political philosophy. It includes original essays by numerous distinguished scholars in the fields of philosophy and political science. The remarkable range and caliber of the contributions attest to the breadth and depth of Davis's influence. The essays in Part I of the volume explore the nature of soul through the lens of tragedy. Part II consists of three essays that explore the human longing for perfect knowledge and completion--and the obstacles to the fulfilment of that longing--in relation to the divine. In Part III, the essays address the distinctive challenges of the political sphere and philosophy's relation to it. And while the relationship between philosophy and poetry is an implicit theme throughout the volume, the essays in Part IV focus directly on philosophy's aestheticizing tendencies. Many different philosophical and literary works are discussed throughout these chapters, including ancient works such as Plato's Republic, Euthydemus and Laws, Homer's Iliad, and Euripides' Trojan Women, as well as works by modern philosophers such as Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. In addition, three essays analyze some of Shakespeare's plays in relation to the thought of Plato and Machiavelli. All of the essays are thematically linked by a common thread as they attend to the poetic dimension of philosophical thinking. Michael Davis is Professor of Philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College, where he has taught since 1977 and has been the Sarah Yates Exley Chair in Teaching Excellence (2003-2005). He has also taught on the graduate faculty at Fordham University and the New School for Social Research. He is the author of numerous articles and books, which include: Ancient Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Science; The Poetry of Philosophy: On Aristotle's Poetics; The Politics of Philosophy: A Commentary on Aristotle's Politics; The Autobiography of Philosophy; Rousseau's The Reveries of the Solitary Walker; Wonderlust: Ruminations on Liberal Education; and The Soul of the Greeks: An Inquiry. He is also co-translator (with Seth Benardete) of Aristotle's On Poetics. Contributors include: Abraham Anderson, Jonathan Badger, Robert Berman, Ronna Burger, Kenneth DeLuca, Gwenda-lin Grewal, Scott Hemmenway, Paul Kirkland, Mary Nichols, Denise Schaeffer, Paul Stern, Richard Velkley, Lisa Pace Vetter, Ann Ward, Lee Ward, Catherine Zuckert and Michael Zuckert. About the Editor: Denise Schaeffer is Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross. She is the author of Rousseau on Education, Freedom and Judgment and contributing co-editor (with Christopher Dustin) of Socratic Philosophy and Its Others. She is co-editor (with Gregory McBrayer and Mary P. Nichols) of the Focus Philosophical Library edition of Plato's Euthydemus, for which she authored the Introduction and co-authored the Interpretive Essay. (shrink)

Who needs rules? -- Communities and rules -- Rules and responsibility -- Natural and positive laws -- History of law -- Systems of law -- Federal and state laws -- Criminal law -- Civil law -- Courts, lawyers, and judges -- Do laws change? -- Living with laws.

The authors outline a program for understanding the semantics and pragmatics of slur terms, proposing that slurs are mixed expressives that predicate membership in some social group G while simultaneously invoking a complex of historical facts and social attitudes about G. The authors then point to the importance of distinguishing between the potential offensive and derogatory effects of slur terms, with the former deriving from the impact on the listener of the invoked content itself, and the latter deriving from inferences (...) about speaker attitudes and intentions. The authors use the resulting framework to discuss several controversial cases of slurs and slurring: terms targeting political views such as ‘Nazi’ and ‘terf’, and cases in which non-slurs are used to derogate, as in cases of misgendering. The authors conclude that what counts as a slur is in part dependent on a background system of ideological assumptions, meaning that whether a particular term counts as a slur will depend in part on one’s ideological commitments and assumptions. (shrink)

Anosognosia is literally ‘unawareness of or failure to acknowledge one’s hemi- plegia or other disability’ (OED). Etymology would suggest the meaning ‘lack of knowledge of disease’ so that anosognosia would include any denial of impairment, such as denial of blindness (Anton’s syndrome). But Babinski, who introduced the term in 1914, applied it only to patients with hemiplegia who fail to acknowledge their paralysis. Most commonly, this is failure to acknowledge paralysis of the left side of the body following damage to (...) the right hemisphere of the brain. In this paper, we shall mainly be concerned with anosognosia for hemiplegia. But we shall also use the term ‘anosognosia’ in an inclusive way to encompass lack of knowledge or acknowledgement of any impairment. Indeed, in the construction ‘anosognosia for X’, X might even be anosognosia for some Y. (shrink)

Cognitive approaches contribute to our understanding of delusions by providing an explanatory framework that extends beyond the personal level to the sub personal level of information-processing systems. According to one influential cognitive approach, two factors are required to account for the content of a delusion, its initial adoption as a belief, and its persistence. This chapter reviews Bayesian developments of the two-factor framework.

Context-sensitive expressions appear ill suited to the purpose of sharing content across contexts. Yet we regularly use them to that end (in regulations, textbooks, memos, guidelines, laws, minutes, etc.). This paper describes the utility of the concept of a metacontext for understanding cross-contextual content-sharing with context-sensitive expressions. A metacontext is the context of a group of contexts: an infrastructure that can channel non-linguistic incentives on content ascription so as to homogenize the content ascribed to context-sensitive expressions in each context in (...) the group. Documents composed of context-sensitive expressions can share content across contexts when supported by an appropriate metacontext. The bible has its church, the textbook its education system, the form its bureaucracy, and the manifesto its social movement. Some metacontexts support cross-contextual content-sharing. Some don’t. A promising research programme (one with practical importance) would take metacontexts as its unit of analysis. (shrink)

Preface: help! my brainchild's been kidnapped! -- Intellectual misconduct: backwards, forward, and sideways -- The world of scholarship: rituals and rewards, norms and departures -- Structural and organizational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Cultural causes of scholarly misconduct -- Individual and situational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Scholarly misconduct as crime -- Criminological theory and scholarly crime -- Implications for theory and research -- Preventing and controlling scholarly crime -- Afterword: against all odds, a code is born.

Dialogue, as a philosophical form, enables the exploration of the conditions, limits, and consequences of understanding arguments. Two philosophers who undertook to write dialogues—Plato and Heidegger—feature moments in philosophical conversation in which understanding, on its own, fails to convince an interlocutor of an argument. In this article, I examine the philosophical stakes of the collisions which unfold in Plato’s Gorgias, between Socrates and Callicles, and in Heidegger’s “Triadic Conversation,” between the Guide and the Scientist. Plato’s Socrates is ostensibly unsuccessful in (...) persuading Callicles to adopt his position while Heidegger’s Guide is able to support the Scientist in learning a new way of thinking. I argue that it is Heidegger’s attention to feeling as a philosophically significant phenomenon which can overcome trans-rational resistance which may persist even after truth has been determined. (shrink)

Physicians place significant weight on the distinction between acts and omissions. Most believe that autonomous refusals for procedures, such as blood transfusions and resuscitation, ought to be respected, but they feel no similar obligation to accede to requests for treatment that will, in the physician’s opinion, harm the patient (e.g., assisted death). Thus, there is an asymmetry. In this paper, we challenge the strength of this distinction by arguing that the ordering of values should be the same in both cases. (...) The reason for respecting refusals is that, in such cases, autonomy outweighs well-being. We argue that the same should be true in request cases, which means that requests should not be denied only due to the treatment being too harmful in the physician’s opinion. Our strategy is to consider and reject a number of arguments for the asymmetrical view, including an appeal to the doing–allowing distinction and positive and negative rights. The duty to respect refusals is still greater than the duty to grant requests on our view, but, by arguing that the ordering of values is the same in both cases, we show that there is less of a distinction in healthcare between requests and refusals than many currently believe. (shrink)

We approach the philosophy of mathematics via a discussion of the differences between classical mathematics and constructive mathematics, arguing that each is a valid activity within its own context.

This overview of the Stoic philosophy of the ancient world begins with the Greek origins of religion and philosophy and gives context to the later chapters. Marcus Aurelius is highlighted as one of the Roman Stoics, along with Epictetus and Seneca.

Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is a powerful examination of current metaphors for and synonyms of teaching. It offers an account of the varied and conflicting influences and conceptual commitments that have contributed to contemporary vocabularies--and that are in some ways maintained by those vocabularies, in spite of inconsistencies and incompatibilities among popular terms. The concern that frames the book is how speakers of English invented (in the original sense of the word, "came upon") our current vocabularies for teaching. Conceptually, (...) this book is unique in the educational literature. As a whole, it presents an overview of the major underlying philosophical and ideological concepts and traditions related to knowledge, learning, and teaching in the Western world, concisely introducing readers to the central historical and contemporary discourses that shape current discussions and beliefs in the field. Because the organization of historical, philosophical, theoretical, and etymological information is around key conceptual divergences in Western thought rather than any sort of chronology, this text is not a linear history, but several histories--or, more precisely, it is a genealogy. Specifically, it is developed around breaks in opinion that gave or are giving rise to diverse interpretations of knowledge, learning, and teaching--highlighting historical moments in which vibrant new figurative understandings of teaching emerged and moments at which they froze into literalness. The book is composed of two sorts of chapters, "branching" and "teaching." Branching chapters include an opening treatment of the break in opinion, separate discussions of each branch, and a summary of the common assumptions and shared histories of the two branches. Teaching chapters offer brief etymological histories and some of the practical implications of the terms for teaching that were coined, co-opted, or redefined within the various traditions. Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is an essential text for senior undergraduate and graduate courses in curriculum studies and foundations of teaching and is highly relevant as well for students, faculty, and researchers across the field of education. (shrink)

There is a correlation between positions taken on some scientific questions and political leaning. One way to explain this correlation is the cultural cognition hypothesis (CCH): people's political leanings are causing them to process evidence to maintain fixed answers to the questions, rather than to seek the truth. Another way is the different background belief hypothesis (DBBH): people of different political leanings have different background beliefs which rationalize different positions on these scientific questions. In this article, I argue for two (...) things. I argue that two attempts by proponents of the CCH to discredit the DBBH fail. And I argue that this matters, because while the CCH makes epistemic paternalistic interventions seem called for (as some philosophers have argued compellingly), the DBBH does not. The DBBH makes it much easier to stay closer to an ideal of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Through a series of exquisite encounters with children, and through a lucid opening up of new aspects of poststructuralist theorizing, Bronwyn Davies opens up new ways of thinking about, and intra-acting with, children. This book carefully guides the reader through a wave of thought that turns the known into the unknown, and then slowly, carefully, makes new forms of thought comprehensible, opening, through all the senses, a deep understanding of our embeddedness in encounters with each other and with the material (...) world. This book takes us into Reggio-Emilia-inspired Swedish preschools in Sweden, into the author's own community in Australia, into poignant memories of childhood, and offers the reader insights into:new ways of thinking about children and their communities; the act of listening as emergent and alive; ourselves as mobile and multiple subjects; the importance of remaining open to the not-yet-known.Defining research as diffractive, and as experimental, Davies' relationship to the teachers and pedagogues she worked with is one of co-experimentation. Her relationship with the children is one in which she explores the ways in which her own new thinking and being might emerge, even as old ways of thinking and being assert themselves and interfere with the unfolding of the new. She draws us into her ongoing experimentation, asking that we think hard, all the while delighting our senses with the poetry of her writing, and the stories of her encounters with children. (shrink)

The eleventh-century philosopher and physician Abu Ali ibn Sina (d. A.D. 1037) was known in the West by his Latinized name Avicenna. An analysis of the sources and evolution of Avicenna's metaphysics, this book focuses on the answers he and his predecessors gave to two fundamental pairs of questions: what is the soul and how does it cause the body; and what is God and how does He cause the world? To respond to these challenges, Avicenna invented new concepts and (...) distinctions and reinterpreted old ones. The author concludes that Avicenna's innovations are a turning point in the history of metaphysics. Avicenna's metaphysics is the culmination of a period of synthesis during which philosophers fused together a Neoplatonic project (reconciling Plato with Aristotle) with a Peripatetic project (reconciling Aristotle with himself). Avicenna also stands at the beginning of a period during which philosophers sought to integrate the Arabic version of the earlier synthesis with Islamic doctrinal theology (kalam). Avicenna's metaphysics significantly influenced European scholastic thought, but it had an even more profound impact on Islamic intellectual history--the philosophical problems and opportunities associated with the Avicennian synthesis continued to be debated up to the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education provides a single compendium on the nature, function, and applications of critical thinking. This book brings together the work of top researchers on critical thinking worldwide, covering questions of definition, pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, research, policy, and application.

The Seraphic Doctrine: love and knowledge in the Dionysian hierarchy -- Affect, cognition, and the natural motion of the will -- Elemental motion and the force of union -- Hierarchy and excess in the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum -- The exemplary bodies of the Legenda Maior.

For over forty years, Leland Ryken has championed and modeled a Christian liberal arts education. His scholarship and commitment to integrating faith with learning in the classroom have influenced thousands of students who have sat under his winsome teaching. Published in honor of Professor Ryken and presented on the occasion of his retirement from Wheaton College, this compilation carries on his legacy of applying a Christian liberal arts education to all areas of life. Five sections explore the background of a (...) Christian liberal arts education, its theological basis, habits and virtues, differing approaches, and ultimate aims. Contributors including Philip Ryken, Jeffry Davis, Duane Litfin, John Walford, Alan Jacobs, and Jim Wilhoit analyze liberal arts as they relate to the disciplines, the Christian faith, and the world. Also included are a transcript of a well-known 1984 chapel talk delivered by Leland Ryken on the student's calling and practical chapters on how to read, write, and speak well. Comprehensive in scope, this substantial volume will be a helpful guide to anyone involved in higher education, as well as to students, pastors, and leaders looking for resources on the importance of faith in learning. - Publisher. (shrink)

Never have the American people been lonelier, unhappier, or more in need of a swift reactionary kick in the pants. There is a better way to live--a way tested by history, a way that fulfills the deepest needs of the human spirit, and a way that promotes the pursuit of true happiness. That way is the reactionary way. In this irrepressibly provocative book, Michael Warren Davis shows you how to unleash your inner reactionary and enjoy life as God intended (...) it. In The Reactionary Mind, you'll learn: Why medieval serfs were probably happier than you are; Why we should look back fondly on the Inquisition; Why all "news" is fake news; How "conservatives" become "adagio progressives""--Provided by the publisher. (shrink)

This paper investigates the origins of the Oral Theory as formulated by Milman Parry in Paris during the late 1920s by reexamining the scholarship on which it rests. Parry's Oral Theory compared the texts of oral performances in Yugoslavia with the Homeric texts in order to shed light on the presumed oral origins of the latter. His work integrated the work of the linguist and Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet, the linguist and scholar of oral poetics Matthias Murko, and the anthropologists Lucien (...) Lévy-Bruhl and Marcel Jousse. (shrink)

This paper investigates the origins of the Oral Theory as formulated by Milman Parry in Paris during the late 1920s by reexamining the scholarship on which it rests. Parry's Oral Theory compared the texts of oral performances in Yugoslavia with the Homeric texts in order to shed light on the presumed oral origins of the latter. His work integrated the work of the linguist and Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet, the linguist and scholar of oral poetics Matthias Murko, and the anthropologists Lucien (...) Lévy-Bruhl and Marcel Jousse. (shrink)