Learning to accept and understand our identity as inhabitants of planet Earth is an essential aspect of living sustainably in a global community with others. What is involved in learning, that despite what divides us, we are first and foremost Earthlings and that the well-being of our planetary home is in our collective hands? What are the cognitive features of concepts that are inherent to thinking like an Earthling? This article considers themes that arise from research that inform (...) what is involved in developing a collective, planetary perspective as it relates to engaging in environmental sustainability. It samples research on how young people understand and reason about agency—their own and that of others—and about the relationship between individual and collective action. It considers the importance of recognizing and engaging with diverse perspectives on agency and collectivity as well as being able to adopt the perspectives of those in different roles and positions. While many of the concepts that are inherent to thinking as part of a collective community of Earthlings are challenging, many are also learnable and represent important instructional targets for helping the next generation to understand how to live together in sustainable ways on a small and finite planet. (shrink)

Although vicarious liability for the acts of co-conspirators is firmly entrenched in federal courts, no adequate theory explains how the act and intention of one conspirator can be attributed to another, simply by virtue of their criminal agreement. This Article argues that the most promising avenue for solving the Pinkerton paradox is an appeal to the collective intention of the conspiratorial group to commit the crime. Unfortunately, misplaced skepticism about the notion of a group will has prevented criminal scholars (...) from embracing the notion of a conspiracy's collective intention to commit a crime. However, positing group intentions requires only that the criminal law recognize the rational relationships between individuals who decide to collectivize reason to pursue a common criminal goal; no burdensome theory of corporate animals with unified minds is required. After exploring the different rational structures that a conspiracy can have, the Article outlines the circumstances when vicarious liability could be justified. Specifically, liability must be limited to participants in tightly knit conspiracies who engage in the kind of common deliberation that is capable of yielding collective intentions. A further consequence of this theory is that liability must be restricted to acts that fall within the scope of the criminal plan, not just acts that should have been reasonably foreseeable to members of the conspiracy. (shrink)

In this article, we draw on feminist trauma studies with the aim of deconstructing the theoretical and methodological binary between individual and collective trauma. Based on first-hand interviews with Bosnian survivors of rape, we attempt to ‘think against’ the private/public split that trauma studies work often unintentionally reifies. We draw upon recent methodological innovations that have been influenced by thinkers such as Derrida and Deleuze. Specifically, we work with what Jackson and Mazzei call rhizomatic and trace readings in the (...) threshold. Through a rhizomatic and trace reading of narrative pieces extracted from the interviews, we engage with the following questions: 1) How do we theorise what Davoine and Gaudilliere call ‘the sociopolitical faultlines’ between collective/public accounts of trauma and those traditionally constructed as private/personal? 2) How do accounts of war rape, which narrate the eruption of the past into the present, elucidate the myriad links between the private and public in a number of ways; among others, the echoes or traces of the everyday ‘before’ in subjects’ stories of the monstrous ‘after’? And 3) What is the relationship between the ‘unspeakable’ in the traumatic memories of the survivors and the ‘speakable’ collective memories of traumatic humanmade events? How does the collective desire ‘not to know’ or ‘to forget’ impact on the individual survivor’s ability to reconstitute their post-trauma identity in a personal as well as a social context? The aim of the analysis is to show that the multifaceted nature of the traumatic reality demands a multifaceted approach that resists binary constructions relating to self/other, private/public, individual/collective. (shrink)

This essay argues that while the notion of collective responsibiility is incoherent if it is taken to be an application of the Kantian model of moral responsibility to groups, it is coherent -- and important -- if formulated in terms of the moral reactions that we can have to groups that cause harm in the world. I formulate collective responsibility as such and in doing so refocus attention from intentionality to the production of harm.

To concretize my discussion of relational autonomy and collective intentionality, I present a case study in which we can see several themes in that scholarly literature exemplified in a real‐life event. The event in question is the Megan Rapinoe‐Abby Wambach goal in the quarterfinals of the Women's World Cup of 2011, one of the greatest in all World Cup history (A video clip of the goal can be found at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B4q6di‐3fg.). In the case study, I concentrate on the ontological status (...) of two key aspects of soccer, the linking of teammates by a pass, and the emergence of the team from the interactions of players. I use concepts drawn from poststructuralism, phenomenology, and enactivist approaches to embodied cognition. (shrink)

The background of the argument Joris Vlieghe develops in this article is the idea, proposed by neopragmatic scholars, that a way of aptly dealing with the societal issues that have come about in the wake of a global ecological crisis consists of engaging in practices of study. This involves thinking, a concept that needs to be reconsidered from an educational perspective. Hence the article turns to John Dewey's classical pragmatic account of thinking, so as to show that this (...) Deweyan approach could be enriched by reading it together with Giorgio Agamben's reflections on this matter. This allows for rendering with greater accuracy certain aspects of thinking that unearth its properly educational meaning: that thinking is necessarily a collective endeavor that is driven by an interruption of our habitual ways of living together with a view toward envisaging truly alternative futures. Thinking is a risky experience in which the foundational subject disappears. Such a view allows, furthermore, for the reconceptualization of thinking in a posthumanist key. (shrink)

This study examines how one student teaching seminar employed collective critical observation and reflection of an experienced high school social studies teacher's pedagogy using a multimedia representation of teaching. Pre-service teachers watched this teacher implement two full class lessons and reflections on teaching about freedom of speech. This study's pre-service social studies teachers exhibited a developing ability, through collective observation, to critically reflect on their individual methodological and philosophical goals, social studies teaching and learning, and professional and curricular (...) visions in relation to their student teaching experiences and future practice. The study's findings offer implications for how pre-service social studies teachers critically reflect on their practice, while also developing knowledge of learners, subject matter, and teaching social studies. (shrink)

The paper seeks to draw out the connections between social capital, collective intelligence and expansive learning, interrogating the terms for their progressive potential. It sets these concepts within their socio-economic context, one which asserts that the development of social capital will be a vehicle for economic regeneration and competitiveness as well as a mechanism for the generation of social inclusion and cohesion. It concludes by arguing that the debate is set within a context that accepts capitalist relations and that (...) this places a limit on the progressive potential of social capital, collective intelligence and expansive learning. (shrink)

Thinking about Reasons collects fourteen new essays on ethics and the philosophy of action, inspired by the work of Jonathan Dancy—one of his generation's most influential moral philosophers.

How should we make sense of praise and blame and other such reactions towards collective agents like governments, universities, or corporations? Collective agents can be appropriate targets for our moral feelings and judgements because they can maintain and express moral positions of their own. Moral agency requires being capable of recognising moral considerations and reasons. It also necessitates the ability to react reflexively to moral matters, i.e. to take into account new moral concerns when they arise. While members (...) of a collective agent are capable of this, the collective frames the thinking of the individual moral agents within it and affects their options in myriad ways. The moral positions thus formed and expressed belong to the collective. Crucially, unlike marginal moral agents, collective agents as moral actors can be held fully responsible for their acts and omissions. (shrink)

Prior studies have shown that people imagine their personal future to be more positive than their country’s collective future. The present research extends the nascent literature by examining the valence and perceived control of personal and national future events in a new experimental paradigm, the cultural generalizability of the findings, and the relation of future thinking to psychological well-being. US college students (Study 1) and US and Turkish community participants (Study 2) imagined what might happen to them and (...) their country in three time points (i.e., next week, next year, and in 10–15 years). They then rated the emotional valence and perceived control of the events and completed a psychological well-being measure. Both US and Turkish participants imagined their personal future to be more positive than their country’s future, whereas they attributed higher perceived control to their countries for national future events than to themselves for personal future events. The positivity of national (Study 1) and personal future events (Study 2) predicted better psychological well-being, whereas perceived control did not. These original findings enrich our theoretical understanding of future thinking. (shrink)

Critical Thinking : A Methodology for Interpreting Information 'deconstructs' common errors in thinking and teaches students to become smarter consumers of research results. Written to complement a textbook or a collection of readings, this brief methods book strengthens students' ability to interpret information whenever and wherever data are used. It includes a wide range of examples along with end of chapter exercises for further discussion. This book will be a coursebook for the undergraduate social science courses where critical (...) thinking, numeracy, and data literacy are common learning objectives"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

According to Wringe 2006 we have good reasons for accepting the existence of Global Collective Obligations - in other words, collective obligations which fall on the world’s population as a whole. One such reason is that the existence of such obligations provides a plausible solution a problem which is sometimes thought to arise if we think that individuals have a right to have their basic needs satisfied. However, obligations of this sort would be of little interest – either (...) theoretical or practical – if they did not give rise, either directly or indirectly, to any kinds of reasons for individuals to behave in certain ways. -/- In this paper, I shall argue that in many situations, forward-looking global obligations give rise to an obligation on individuals to work towards bringing into existence and support an institutional system which will enable their obligations to be met. My argument for this conclusion involves two steps. In the first step, I address a general question about how collective obligations can give rise to individual obligations without being reducible to them, and which obligations they give rise to. Here I give a Kant-inspired argument, based on the principles that ‘ought implies can’ and that the content of the moral law is given by reflecting on how agents should legislate in a kingdom of ends, which is designed to show that collective obligations can give rise to individual obligations. In the second step I apply this principle to the case of global forward-looking obligations. (shrink)

History education holds strong potential for students to examine how racism and other intersecting forms of oppression embedded within U.S. institutions have and still impact today’s social fabric. When rooted in Martell and Stevens’ “thinking like an activist” framework, history education provides opportunities for preservice teachers (PSTs) to see, understand, and disrupt the dominant narrative. They can begin to reimagine their roles as future leaders in the classroom and beyond to ensure that all students thrive and not just survive. (...) Thus, for this qualitative study, we engaged our PST in a book study of A Different Mirror for Young People: A History for Multicultural America. Through intentional content and pedagogical choices, we investigated the question, “ How do preservice teachers make sense of history using the ‘thinking like an activist’ framework?” Findings indicated how Takaki’s different mirror, as a counternarrative centering the perspectives and experiences of historically marginalized groups, allowed PSTs 1) to unlearn oppressive structures (cultural preparation), 2) begin to develop a sociopolitical consciousness of systemic oppression, albeit through an outsider’s perspective (critical analysis), and 3) to analyze how collective action in the past enacted change–although through an already, but not yet, understanding of their role in social change in the present (collective action). (shrink)

We provide a Camusian/Peircean notion of inquiry that emphasises an attitude of fallibilism and sustained epistemic dissonance as a conceptual framework for a theory of classroom practice founded on Deep Reflective Thinking (DTR), in which the cultivation of collective doubt, reflective evaluation and how these relate to the phenomenological aspects of inquiry are central to communities of inquiry. In a study by Fynes-Clinton, preliminary evidence demonstrates that if students engage in DRT, they more frequently experience cognitive dissonance and (...) as a result improve their ability to engage in further and more frequent DRT. Sustained intellectual progress occurs when the inquiry reaches a point whereby students can thoughtfully move between the position of disequilibrium (doubt) and equilibrium (belief) whilst understanding the impermanency of any fixed belief, which, in turn, enables reconstruction of thinking and appropriation of learning in the context of collaborative philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Two studies examined the use of think aloud (TA) protocol as a means for collecting data of cognitive processes during performance in golf. In study 1, TA was employed to examine if different verbalisation (Level 2 or Level 3 TA) instructions influence performance of high and low skilled golfers. Participants performed 30 putts using TA at either Level 2, Level 3, or no verbalization condition. Although Level 3 verbalization produced a higher volume of verbal data than Level 2, TA at (...) either level 2 or 3 did not impair putting performance compared to no verbalization. Study 2 examined the congruence between data collected via TA at Level 3 and cued retrospective recall of cognitive processes during golf performance. Experienced golfers performed six holes of golf whilst engaging in Level 3 TA. After performance, three semi-structured retrospective interviews were conducted (ten minutes after performance, 24 hours after performance and 48 hours after performance). A comparison of the themes identified large discrepancies between the information reported during TA and at interview, with only 38-41% similarity in variables reported to influence decision making on each hole. Both studies suggest TA is a valuable method for recording cognitive processes of individuals during task performance. TA provides richer verbal data regarding decisions than cued retrospective recall, and TA does not negatively impact performance. (shrink)

Our moral obligations can sometimes be collective in nature: They can jointly attach to two or more agents in that neither agent has that obligation on their own, but they – in some sense – share it or have it in common. In order for two or more agents to jointly hold an obligation to address some joint necessity problem they must have joint ability to address that problem. Joint ability is highly context-dependent and particularly sensitive to shared (or (...) even common) beliefs. As such, joint ability can be deliberately generated in a given collection of agents by providing information related to collective goals and contributory actions. As moral agents, we regularly face problems wherein the outcome of our actions depends on how others choose. There are two ways of deliberating about our own choices in such cases. We can either think of our choices as best responses to others’ choices (I-mode reasoning). Or we can think of our own choices as contributions to the collectively best option (even when we do not know how others are (likely) to choose) (we-mode reasoning). In deliberating about the right (individual) course of action vis-à-vis collective action problems, agents regularly we-frame the case at hand, that is, they include options in their deliberation that are only collectively available, and they we-reason with regard to their individual contributory actions. It is a necessary condition for collective obligations that potential collaborators facing a joint necessity case have grounds to privilege we-reasoning over reasoning in I-mode. (shrink)

_Thinking Education Through Alain Badiou_ represents the first collection to explore the educational implications of French philosopher Alain Badiou's challenge to contemporary philosophical orthodoxy put forth in his 1993 work, _Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil._ Represents the first collection of work in education to grapple with what Alain Badiou might mean for the enterprise of schooling Takes up Badiou's challenge to contemporary and conventional Anglo-American doxa Includes original essays by experts in several different educational fields.

Thinking About Science is a collection of essays about the nature of the contemporary scientific enterprise by two eminent microbiologists who have had successful careers as researchers, clinicians and educators. Individual chapters address various aspects of science, good and bad, illustrated with historical vignettes, personal experiences and relevant academic studies, including a candid scorecard of the performance of science during the COVID-19 pandemic and the authors' prescriptions for the future. With humanity facing unprecedented challenges from pathogenic microbes, climate change (...) and energy shortages, the topic of the scientific enterprise has never been timelier. (shrink)

Rahat Naqvi and Hans Smits' edited collection, "Thinking about and Enacting Curriculum in 'Frames of War'" is centered on the theme of how the current global order creates precarious conditions for human life. The contributors respond to the challenges Judith Butler posed about the fragility of life and questions about how we apprehend, and take up ethically, our responsibilities for those who are considered "Other." The overarching objective of the book is the meaning of a call to ethics, and (...) how discussion of framing and frames is a provocation to think about our responsibilities as curriculum scholars and practitioners"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Together, these collected papers develop the idea that human thinking - from scientific creativity to simply understanding what a positive HIV test means - "happens" partly outside the mind.".

Since Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theorisation around the beginning of the twentieth-century, the concept of the unconscious has exerted an enormous influence upon psychoanalysis and psychology, literary, critical and social theory. Yet prior to Freud, the concept of the unconscious already possessed a complex genealogy in nineteenth-century German philosophy and literature, beginning with the aftermath of Kant's Critical Philosophy and the origins of German Idealism, and extending into the discourses of Romanticism and beyond. Despite the many key thinkers who contributed to (...) the Germanic discourses on the unconscious, the English speaking world remains comparatively unaware of this heritage and its influence upon the origins of psychoanalysis. Bringing together a collection of experts in the fields of German Studies, Continental Philosophy, the History and Philosophy of Science, and the History of Psychoanalysis, this volume examines the various theorisations, representations and transformations undergone by the concept of the unconscious in nineteenth-century German thought"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In order to explore narrativity as political action in human rights education and the relevance of uniqueness and plurality in this endeavour, this chapter first makes a shift from particularity as a collective identity of the other towards the need for plurality in any conception of rights in cosmopolitan thinking, as argued by Sharon Todd. The aim is to gain a notion of human rights learning that moves away from identity politics, from what we are, and instead engages (...) with unique relations in plural classrooms, where who one is is addressed through the notion of life narratives. The chapter then turns to Hannah Arendt and her positing of the dangers of not taking responsibility as educators to introduce students to a world which they are to transform. Finally, the chapter draws on the notion of counter‐narratives proposed by Michael Peters and Colin Lankshear. (shrink)

From 1995 to 2013, Stanley Fish's provocative New York Times columns consistently generated passionate discussion and debate. In Think Again, he has assembled almost one hundred of his best columns into a thematically arranged collection with a substantial new introduction that explains his intention in writing these pieces and offers an analysis of why they provoked so much reaction. Some readers reported being frustrated when they couldn’t figure out where Fish, one of America’s most influential thinkers, stood on the controversies (...) he addressed in the essays—from atheism and affirmative action to plagiarism and postmodernism. But, as Fish says, that is the point. Opinions are cheap; you can get them anywhere. Instead of offering just another set of them, Fish analyzes and dissects the arguments put forth by different sides—in debates over free speech, identity politics, the gun lobby, and other hot-button topics—in order to explain how their arguments work or don’t work. In short, these are essays that teach you not what to think but how to think more clearly. Brief and accessible yet challenging, these essays provide all the hard-edged intellectual, cultural, and political analysis one expects from Fish. At the same time, the collection includes a number of revealing and even poignant autobiographical essays in which, as Fish says, "readers will learn about my anxieties, my aspirations, my eccentricities, my foibles, my father, and my obsessions—Frank Sinatra, Ted Williams, basketball, and Jews." Reflecting the wide-ranging interests of one of today's leading critics, this is Fish’s broadest and most engaging book to date. (shrink)

With higher education around the world in a period of extreme flux, this volume explores its underlying philosophy, a core element of the ongoing debate. Offering a diverse range of perspectives from an international selection of renowned scholars of higher education, the book is full of imaginative insights that add up to a substantive contribution to the discussion. As universities attempt to adapt to a new environment characterized by stiff international competition, networked remote learning, burgeoning student numbers, and comparative performance (...) assessment, how we conceptualize the purpose and ethos of our higher learning institutions is more important than ever. This publication features a multitude of distinctive approaches that illuminate potential solutions to the complex issues universities must grapple with in these uncertain times. Rather than espousing a singular philosophical approach, the editors have assembled views from across the spectrum and from differing national contexts, representing a multidisciplinary response to the situation. This collection of papers aims thus to inspire fresh developments in the way we think about the complexities of, and options available to, higher education. (shrink)

I argue that culpable ignorance can be irreducibly collective. In some cases, it is not fair to expect any individual to have avoided her ignorance of some fact, but it is fair to expect the agents together to have avoided their ignorance of that fact. Hence, no agent is individually culpable for her ignorance, but they are culpable for their ignorance together. This provides us with good reason to think that any group that is culpably ignorant in this irreducibly (...) collective sense is non-distributively collectively responsible for subsequent unwitting acts and consequences. (shrink)

Thinking Radical Democracy is an introduction to nine key political thinkers who contributed to the emergence of radical democratic thought in post-war French political theory: Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Clastres, Claude Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis, Guy Debord, Jacques Rancière, Étienne Balibar, and Miguel Abensour. The essays in this collection connect these writers through their shared contribution to the idea that division and difference in politics can be perceived as productive, creative, and fundamentally democratic. The questions they raise regarding equality (...) and emancipation in a democratic society will be of interest to those studying social and political thought or democratic activist movements like the Occupy movements and Idle No More. --Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Dune implies that our thinking must be multidimensional: it must include not only the Arrakeen plants, people, sands, and skies, but also their interconnections across space and time. Philosophical ecology, put most simply, is the holistic comprehension of a world and its complexity. Aldo Leopold was among the first American conservationists, and he founded the field of wildlife ecology. The standpoint of an Arrakeen planetary ecologist, like any wildlife ecologist of earth, embraces not individuals but relations. Climate change is (...) a problem that exceeds the scope of mere individual action and requires thinking collectively across space and time. Deep Ecologists mobilize ecological self understanding as the pre condition for practical political change. By inviting us to think like a desert – to reflect on the nature of the self, the dangers of excess, and the virtues of humility – Dune teaches us to be a little more like the Fremen with environmental resources. (shrink)

Philosophical reflection on the emotions has a long history stretching back to classical Greek thought, even though at times philosophers have marginalized or denigrated them in favour of reason. Fourteen leading philosophers here offer a broad survey of the development of our understanding of the emotions. The thinkers they discuss include Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, Brentano, Stumpf, Scheler, Heidegger, and Sartre. Central issues include the taxonomy of the emotions; the (...) distinction between emotions, passions, feelings and moods; the relation between the emotions and reason; the relationship between the self and the emotions. At a metaphilosophical level, the collection also raises issues about the value of historical study of the discipline, and what light it can shed on contemporary concerns. Thinking about the Emotions is a fascinating and illuminating collective study of how philosophers have grappled with this most intriguing part of our nature as beings who feel as well as think and act. (shrink)

This book is a contribution to the philosophical discourse on education. Education is considered as a tool of philosophy. Education (paideia) and politics (politeia) are equal in importance for building a sustainable society free from feud and unhappiness. Discursive thinking through of education is based on Plato's dialogues and the results of epistemological, metaphysical and ethical research in the fields of cosmology, biology and neuroscience. The author demonstrates the potential of the threefold scheme of philosophy, a Platone philosophandi ratio (...) triplex, for ordering individual and collective discourse and way of life in strict accordance with the intelligible complexity of the expanding cosmos. An essential read for students and scholars interested in the crossroad between education and philosophy. (shrink)