Although far from being a supporter of Russian officialdom, in the present article the author will defend a position of dissent in relation to Maidan. In his view, the problem with Maidan is its lack of dialogue, overt or covert appeal to force, disregard for the fragility of Ukraine as a whole, and rejection of Ukraine's deep ties with Russia, which for Ukrainian culture are essential. According to this view, the phenomenon of Maidan, and the subsequent course of events, cannot (...) be made to fit the Procrustean bed of preformed ideological stereotypes. Therefore, the current crisis in Ukraine and surrounding areas requires a more realistic approach, and a better understanding among the parties involved on the basis of fundamental human values. If realized, such an understanding could be a profound historical outcome of the current crisis. (shrink)

Reflections about authors’ participation in Alushta Schools of Young Philosophers.

Interview of Olga Simoroz, Sofia Dmitrenko, Evgenia Zaichenko with Viktor Malakhov on the development of ethics as a philosophical discipline in Ukraine of the 60's - 70's.

In the history of culture there are "linking" themes, a common interest in which sometimes brings quite distant periods closer together. One such theme that affects the contemporary understanding of medieval culture is, in our view, the problem of speech and silence as types of relation to reality based, respectively, on its intelligible differentiation and its total acceptance as such.

В книге говорится о творце, генерирующем творческие акты – непредсказуемые решения and (озарения and ), феномены, которыми обладает только человек-личность. Общественные институты, как и само общество в целом, не могут исключительно своими социальными усилиями генерировать творческий акт. Таким образом, без этого личностного, практически абсолютно автономного, творческого решения общество не может ни обойтись, ни чем-либо его заменить. Используя творческие акты, эти феномены, имманентные только человеку, общество консолидируется и развивается, и, таким образом, человек-творец становится двигателем истории человечества. В этом смысле категория личность (...) имеет не меньшую значимость, чем категория производительные силы или категория общество. Рассматривается концепция природы творчества по Вифляеву, с полным философским обоснованием. (shrink)

Current approaches used in educational research and practice to evaluate the quality of written arguments often rely on structural analysis. In such assessments, credit is awarded for the presence of structural elements of an argument, such as claims, evidence, and rebuttals. In this article, we discuss limitations of such approaches, including the absence of criteria for evaluating the quality of the argument elements. We then present an alternative framework, based on the Rational Force Model (RFM), which originated from the work (...) of a Nordic philosopher Næss. Using an example of an argumentative essay, we demonstrate the potential of the RFM to improve argument analysis by focusing on the acceptability and relevance of argument elements, two criteria widely considered to be fundamental markers of argument strength. We outline possibilities and challenges with using the RFM in educational contexts and conclude by proposing directions for future research. (shrink)

Sociological theories of space have so far not provided an in-depth analysis of online spaces. The paper addresses this issue by means of Löw’s relational theory of space. As this theory mainly focuses on material spaces, it is necessary to embrace the phenomenological perspective in order to apply it to the virtual realm. More recent phenomenological research has highlighted the ongoing mediatization or virtualization of the life-world. These theories, and presence research more generally, are useful for examining the layers of (...) virtual presence. This paper focuses on two emblematic types of spaces: multiplayer online role-playing games and Skype video chats. The first represents an online version of a Schutzian finite province of meaning, while Skyping is an example of how the paramount reality of everyday life expands into the virtual realm. Albeit differently, actors in both cases constitute hybrid, virtual-material spaces with various forms and degrees of virtual presence. User experiences in these spaces are in line with contemporary sociological diagnoses indicating the vanishing experience of living in space and the general tendency of late modernity to question previous social forms of modernity. (shrink)

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

We paraphrase Descartes’ famous dictum in the area of AI ethics where the “I doubt and therefore I am” is suggested as a necessary aspect of morality. Therefore AI, which cannot doubt itself, cannot possess moral agency. Of course, this is not the end of the story. We explore various aspects of the human mind that substantially differ from AI, which includes the sensory grounding of our knowing, the act of understanding, and the significance of being able to doubt ourselves. (...) The foundation of our argument is the discipline of ethics, one of the oldest and largest knowledge projects of human history, yet, we seem only to be beginning to get a grasp of it. After a couple of thousand years of studying the ethics of humans, we (humans) arrived at a point where moral psychology suggests that our moral decisions are intuitive, and all the models from ethics become relevant only when we explain ourselves. This recognition has a major impact on what and how we can do regarding AI ethics. We do not offer a solution, we explore some ideas and leave the problem open, but we hope somewhat better understood than before our study. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This is a collective writing project that is part of the larger design of Infantologies, Infanticides and Infantilizations; a quartet that explores the philosophy of infants from thematic perspectives, that puts infants at the centre of our reflections, and that encourages a different academic style of thinking.

I present a systematic interpretation of the foundational purpose of constructions in ancient Greek geometry. I argue that Greek geometers were committed to an operationalist foundational program, according to which all of mathematics—including its entire ontology and epistemology—is based entirely on concrete physical constructions. On this reading, key foundational aspects of Greek geometry are analogous to core tenets of 20th-century operationalist/positivist/constructivist/intuitionist philosophy of science and mathematics. Operationalism provides coherent answers to a range of traditional philosophical problems regarding classical mathematics, such (...) as the epistemic warrant and generality of diagrammatic reasoning, superposition, and the relation between constructivism and proof by contradiction. Alleged logical flaws in Euclid can be interpreted as sound operationalist reasoning. Operationalism also provides a compelling philosophical motivation for the otherwise inexplicable Greek obsession with cube duplication, angle trisection, and circle quadrature. Operationalism makes coherent sense of numerous specific choices made in this tradition, and suggests new interpretations of several solutions to these problems. In particular, I argue that: Archytas’s cube duplication was originally a single-motion machine; Diocles’s cissoid was originally traced by a linkage device; Greek conic section theory was thoroughly constructive, based on the conic compass; in a few cases, string-based constructions of conic sections were used instead; pointwise constructions of curves were rejected in foundational contexts by Greek mathematicians, with good reason. Operationalism enables us to view the classical geometrical tradition as a more unified and philosophically aware enterprise than has hitherto been recognised. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is proposed that experts are able to integrate prior contextual knowledge with emergent visual information to make complex predictive judgments about the world around them, often under heightened levels of uncertainty and extreme time constraints. However, limited knowledge exists about the impact of anxiety on the use of such contextual priors when forming our decisions. We provide a novel insight into the combined impact of contextual priors and anxiety on anticipation in soccer. Altogether, 12 expert soccer players were required (...) to predict the actions of an oncoming opponent while viewing life-sized video simulations of 2-versus-2 defensive scenarios. Performance effectiveness and processing efficiency were measured under four conditions: no contextual priors about the action tendencies of the opponent and low anxiety ; no CP and high anxiety ; CP and LA; CP and HA. The provision of contextual priors did not affect processing efficiency, but it improved performance effectiveness... (shrink)

The geometrical algebra hypothesis was once the received interpretation of Greek mathematics. In recent decades, however, it has become anathema to many. I give a critical review of all arguments against it and offer a consistent rebuttal case against the modern consensus. Consequently, I find that the geometrical algebra interpretation should be reinstated as a viable historical hypothesis.

We present results from a single case study based on semi-structured interviews with a student (a boy in school year 3) diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and his school staff after participating in a short and small-scale intervention carried out in a socio-economically disadvantaged Swedish elementary school in 2019. The student participated in a seven week long intervention with a total of 12 philosophical dialogues (ranging from 45 to 60 minutes). Two facilitators, both with years of facilitation experience and teacher (...) degree and at least BA in philosophy, facilitated the majority of the dialogues and mainly followed a ”routine” procedure. The student was interviewed in direct connection to the end of the intervention about his experiences from the dialogues and his perceptions about whether and how the dialogues had influenced him. The student’s two teachers, who had participated in the dialogues as participants, were interviewed as a pair, also in direct connection to the end of the intervention, while the school principal was interviewed two years after the study. These staff interviews concerned the staff’s experiences of the influence of the dialogues on the students within the intervention as well as transfer effects to other contexts in school. The data from the study include detailed elaborations from a student perspective of different effects on the student’s communicative and cognitive development, which are in several respects supported also by staff reports. The results show that the student was able, interested, and willing to participate in philosophical dialogues, and our data point to several positive outcomes for the student in the communicative and cognitive domains. (shrink)

The exacerbation of ethnic [natsional'nye] conflicts in the USSR is ruinous not only for our country. Polemics on the ethnic question are being waged at all levels and with all means, but what they lack most is a sober analysis of explosive problems. Even persons who in every other respect are distinguished by tolerance and common sense make an unworthy show of themselves on this sensitive question.

Mathematical texts raise particular dilemmas for the translator. With its arm’s-length relation to verbal expression and long-standing “mathematics is written for mathematicians” ethos, mathematics lends itself awkwardly to textually centered analysis. Otherwise sound standards of historical scholarship can backfire when rigidly upheld in a mathematical context. Mathematically inclined historians have had more faith in a purported empathic sixth sense—and there is a case to be made that this is how mathematical authors have generally expected their works to be read—but it (...) is difficult to pin down exact evidentiary standards for this supposed instinct. This essay urges that both of these points of view, for all the tension between them, be kept in the historian’s toolbox. It illustrates these considerations with a case study from the Ptolemaic astronomical tradition on computing lunar model parameters from eclipse data. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to improve our understanding of bracketing, one of the most central philosophical and theoretical constructs of phenomenology, as a theory of mind. Furthermore, we wanted to showcase how this theoretical construct can be implemented as a methodological tool. -/- Design/methodology/approach – In this study we have adopted an approach similar to a qualitative metasynthesis, comparing the emergent patterns of two empirical projects, seeking synergies and contradictions and looking for additional insights from new (...) emerging patterns. -/- Findings – On a philosophical level, we have found that bracketing, as a theoretical construct, is not about the achievement of objectivity; quite to the contrary, it embraces subjectivity and puts it centre-stage. On a theoretical level, we have achieved a better understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology, as a theory of mind. On a methodological level, we have achieved a powerful way of supplementing and/or clarifying research findings, by using a theoretical construct as a methodological tool. -/- Originality/value – Our paper contributes to the phenomenology literature at a philosophical, theoretical and methodological level, by offering a better understanding and a novel implementation of one of the central theoretical constructs of phenomenology. (shrink)

Engagement with the historical and theoretical underpinnings of measuring quality of life (QoL) and patient‐reported outcomes (PROs) in healthcare is important. Ideas and values that shape such practices—and in the endgame, people's lives—might otherwise remain unexamined, be taken for granted or even essentialized. Our aim is to explicate and theoretically discuss the philosophical tenets underlying the practices of QoL assessment and PRO measurement in relation to the notion of person‐centredness. First, we engage with the late‐modern history of the concept of (...) QoL and the act of assessing and measuring it. Working with the historical method of genealogy, we describe the development of both QoL assessments and PRO measures (PROMs) within healthcare by accounting for the contextual conditions for their possibility. In this way, the historical and philosophical underpinnings of these measurement practices are highlighted. We move on to analyse theoretical and philosophical underpinnings regarding the use of PROMs and QoL assessments in clinical practice, as demonstrated in review studies thereof. Finally, we offer a critical analysis regarding the state of theory in the literature and conclude that, although improved person‐centredness is an implied driver of QoL assessments and PROMs in clinical practice, enhanced theoretical underpinning of the development of QoL assessments is called for. (shrink)

The article has two main goals. 1. To reveal the psychological mechanism of the assimilation of faith and the concept of its relationship with reason in the philosophy of B. Pascal, as well as the role of faith both in knowledge in general and in knowledge of God. 2. To determine the degree of influence of Augustine's theological and philosophical concepts on the formation of Pascal's views. By comparing the concepts of will, understanding, faith and reason, the author comes to (...) the conclusion that Augustine, like Pascal, does not oppose faith to reason, but includes reason in the "mechanism" of acquiring faith. In this way, the reason in the act of faith becomes a direct partner of consciousness and reason. The logic of faith, according to Pascal and Augustine, differs from the logic of understanding in that understanding is based on the material reality of earthly existence, while faith is based on the supernatural reality of divine inspiration. (shrink)

Nudges have been criticized for working ‘in the dark’, influencing people without their full awareness. To assess whether this property renders nudging an illegitimate policy tool in liberal democracies, we argue that in scrutinizing nudge transparency, we should adequately divide our focus between nudging techniques, the nudgers employing them, and the nudgees subjected to them. We develop an account of what it means for nudgees to be ‘watchful’, a disposition that enables them to resist and circumvent nudges. We argue that (...) such ‘watchfulness’ should be cultivated if we want to implement nudges in legitimate, accountable, and democratic ways. (shrink)

Analyses in Greek geometry are traditionally seen as heuristic devices. However, many occurrences of analysis in formal treatises are difficult to justify in such terms. I show that Greek analysies of geometrics can also serve formal mathematical purposes, which are arguably incomplete without which their associated syntheses are arguably incomplete. Firstly, when the solution of a problem is preceded by an analysis, the analysis latter proves rigorously that there are no other solutions to the problem than those offered in the (...) synthesis. Secondly, whenever some construction assumption beyond ruler and compass is made, the problem is not only solvable by that assumption but is in fact equivalent to that assumption in a rigorous sense. (shrink)

A particularly strong reason to vaccinate against transmittable diseases, based on considerations of harm, is to contribute to the realization of population-level herd immunity. We argue, however, that herd immunity alone is insufficient for deriving a strong harm-based moral obligation to vaccinate in all circumstances, since the obligation significantly weakens well above and well below the herd immunity threshold. The paper offers two additional harm-based arguments that, together with the herd immunity argument, consolidates our moral obligation. First, we argue that (...) individuals should themselves aim not to expose others to risk of harm, and that this consideration becomes stronger the more non-vaccinated people there are, i.e., the further we are below herd immunity. Second, we elaborate on two pragmatic reasons to vaccinate beyond the realization of herd immunity, pertaining to instability of vaccination rates and population heterogeneity, and argue that vaccinating above the threshold should serve as a precautionary measure for buttressing herd immunity. We also show that considerations of harm have normative primacy in establishing this obligation over considerations of fairness. Although perfectly sound, considerations of fairness are, at worst secondary, or at best complementary to considerations of harm. (shrink)

In this article, we distinguish between three approaches to ethics in school, each giving an interpretation of the expression ‘ethics in school’: the descriptive facts about ethics approach, roughly consisting of teaching empirical facts about moral matters to students; the moral fostering approach, consisting of mediating a set of given values to students; and the philosophical ethics (PE) approach, consisting of critically discussing and evaluating moral issues with students. Thereafter, three influential arguments for why there ought to be ethics in (...) school are discussed, and each argument is interpreted given each approach to ethics in school, respectively. Thereby, we evaluate which interpretation of ‘ethics in school’ produces the strongest arguments, and thus, which approach is best supported by these arguments. The conclusion is that there ought to be PE in school. (shrink)

ch. 1. Kont͡sept͡sii͡a prava -- ch. 2. Posledovateli i ucheniki : fragmenty iz rabot i nauchnye statʹi.

I am honored to respond to Paul Guyer’s elaboration on the role of examples of perfectionism in Cavell’s and Kant’s philosophies. Guyer’s appeal to Kant’s notion of freedom opens the way for suggestive readings of Cavell’s work on moral perfectionism but also, as I will show, for controversy.There are salient aspects of both Kant’s and Cavell’s philosophy that are crucial to understanding perfectionism and, let me call it, perfectionist education, that I wish to emphasize in response to Guyer. In responding (...) to Guyer’s text, I shall do three things. First, I shall explain why I think it is misleading to speak of Cavell’s view that moral perfectionism is involved in a struggle to make oneself intelligible to oneself.. (shrink)