Elgin has offered us a powerful articulation of an epistemology that does not, contra veritism, have a concern for truth at its core. I contend that the case for Elgin’s alternative epistemological picture trades upon a faulty conception of what a veritistic epistemological outlook involves. In particular, I argue that the right conception of veritism—one that is fundamentally informed by the intellectual virtues—has none of the problematic consequences that Elgin claims. Relatedly, I maintain that we can account for the core (...) role of objectual understanding in inquiry without thereby giving up on truth as the fundamental epistemic good. (shrink)

Suppose you ask yourself whether your father's record collection includes a certain recording of The Trout and venture to find out. At that time, you embark on an inquiry into whether your father owns the relevant recording. Your inquiry is a project with a specific goal: finding out whether your father owns the recording. This fact about your inquiry generalizes: inquiry is a goal-directed enterprise. A specific inquiry can be individuated by the question (...) it aims to answer and by who aims to answer the question. Your inquiry into whether your father owns the recording differs from your inquiry into how many records your father owns because different questions are being asked. Your inquiry into whether your father owns the recording differs from my inquiry into whether he does because different people are inquiring. The goal of inquiry into a given question by an agent, α, can be characterized, neutrally, as α's having the answer to that question. I will here focus only on inquiries into whether questions and characterize the goal of inquiry into whether φ by α as α's having the answer to the question whether φ. (shrink)

Veritists hold that the goal of inquiry is true belief, while justificationists contend that the goal of inquiry is justified belief. Recently, Christoph Kelp makes two new objections to both veritism and justificationism. Further, he claims that the two objections suggest that the goal of inquiry is knowledge. This paper defends a sophisticated version of veritism against Kelp's two objections.

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some (...) cases, the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)

This study analyzes the ideals of responsibility and accountability, asking such questions as when it is legitimate to blame top officials of an organization for mistakes made by personnel below them in the bureaucratic hierarchy; when things go wrong in a large and complex organization like the Canadian Forces, who is responsible and accountable; and whether a plea of ignorance is a good excuse. The study also analyzes the doctrine of ministerial responsibility in both the British and Canadian parliamentary traditions, (...) asking whether it is realistic to expect that a government minister should be held responsible for everything that goes wrong in his/her department. Finally, traditional military values are examined, considering the kinds of attitudes and values expected from Canada's armed forces and the differences between the military and civilian sectors. (shrink)

W.V.Quine and Philip Kitcher have both developed naturalistic approaches to the philosophy of science which are partially based on a skeptical view about the possibility of rational inquiry into certain questions of value. Nonetheless, both Quine and Kitcher do not wish to give up on the normative dimension of the philosophy of science. I argue that Kitcher's recent argument against the specification of the goal of science in terms of truth raises a problem for Quine's account of the (...) normative dimensions of the discipline. However Kitcher's alternative suggestion, that the goal of science is to be specified in terms of an ideal democratic procedure, does not escape this problem, given Kitcher's own limited skepticism about rational inquiry into certain questions of value. (shrink)

There are three widely held beliefs among epistemologists: (1) the goal of inquiry is truth or something that entails truth; (2) epistemology aims for a reflectively stable theory via reflective equilibrium; (3) epistemology is a kind of inquiry. I argue that accepting (1) and (2) entails denying (3). This is a problem especially for the philosophers (e.g. Duncan Pritchard and Alvin Goldman) who accept both (1) and (2), for in order to be consistent, they must reject (3). (...) The tension is not restricted to epistemology. A similar tension also exists in the area of moral philosophy. The tension can be generalized. If one believes that the goal of inquiry is truth or something that entails truth and that philosophy aims for a reflectively stable theory via reflective equilibrium, she must deny that philosophy is a kind of inquiry. (shrink)

In a recent article, Ireneusz Zieminski argues that the main goals of philosophy of religion are to define religion; assess the truth value of religion and; assess the rationality of a religious way of life. Zieminski shows that each of these goals are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Hence, philosophy of religion leads to scepticism. He concludes that the conceptual tools philosophers of religion employ are best suited to study specific religious traditions, rather than religion more broadly construed. But (...) it’s unclear whether the goals Zieminski attributes to philosophy of religion are accurate or even necessary for successful inquiry. I argue that an essentialist definition of religion isn’t necessary for philosophy of religion and that philosophers of religion already use the conceptual analysis in the way Zieminski suggests that they should. Finally, the epistemic standard Zieminski has in view is often obscure. And when it is clear, it is unrealistically high. Contemporary philosophers of religion rarely, if ever, claim to be offering certainty, or even evidence as strong as that found in the empirical sciences. (shrink)

I propose the next steps in the neuropragmatic approach to philosophy that has been advocated by Solymosi and Shook (2013). My focus is the initial process of inquiry implicit in addressing philosophical questions of cognition and mind by utilizing the tools of neuroscientific research. I combine John Dewey’s pattern of inquiry with Charles Peirce’s three forms of inference in order to outline a methodological schema for neuropragmatic inquiry. My goal is to establish ignorance and guessing as (...) well-defined pillars of methodology upon which to build a neuropragmatic approach to inquiry. First, I outline Dewey’s pattern of inquiry, highlighting the initial problematic phase in which recognized ignorance provides the basis upon which to frame a philosophical problem and initiate the trajectory by which philosophical questions may be addressed with the assistance of neuroscientific evidence. Second, I provide an outline of Peirce’s three forms of inference, focusing upon the first phase of abduction: guessing. Third, I explain the transition between ignorance and guessing, urging the benefit of attending to these two aspects of inquiry. Finally, I provide an initial sketch indicating the next steps concerning a pragmatic reconstruction of neurophilosophy, pointing towards the need for a more thorough examination of scientific methodology within and following analyses of philosophical problems and neuroscientific evidence. (shrink)

The Interrogative Model of Inquiry and Dynamic Epistemic Logics are two central paradigms in formal epistemology. This paper is motivated by the observation of a significant complementarity between them: on the one hand, the IMI provides a framework for investigating inquiry represented as an idealized game between an Inquirer and Nature, along with an account of the interaction between questions and inferences in information-seeking processes, but is lacking a formulation in the multi-agent case; on the other hand, DELs (...) model various operations of information change in multi-agent systems, but the field is lacking a proper integration of question and inference dynamics, along with an application to the investigation of inquiry processes. The goal of this paper is to integrate the two paradigms in such a way as to combine their respective insights. To this end, we develop a formal system called DEL $$_\mathrm{IMI }$$ IMI which aims to represent the interaction between question and inference dynamics in inquiry—as described by the IMI—in a multi-agent setting, and this in such a way as to enable an investigation of inquiry games with multi-agent dimensions. The DEL $$_\mathrm{IMI }$$ IMI system is designed to represent the possible moves of such inquiry games through three types of epistemic actions: agents addressing questions to Nature, agents addressing questions to other agents, agents drawing logical inferences. We then show how the resulting framework can be used to formally define multi-agent inquiry games. We conclude by evaluating the interest of the DEL $$_\mathrm{IMI }$$ IMI system for the IMI and DELs paradigms. (shrink)

In this paper I take a closer look at Sextus Empiricus’ arguments in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.25-30 and try to make sense of his account of Skepticism as a goal-directed philosophy. I argue that Sextus fails to mount a convincing case for the view that tranquility, rather than suspension of judgment, is the ultimate goal of his inquiries.

Davidson, Rorty, and Rosenberg each reject, for similar reasons, the idea that truth is the aim of belief and the goal of inquiry. Rosenberg provides the most explicit and compelling argument for this provocative view. Here, with a focus on this argument, I suggest that this view is a mistake, but not for the reasons some might think. In my view, we can view truth as a constitutive aim of belief even if not a regulative goal of (...) inquiry, if we adopt a Sellarsian view of the ought-to-be’s of belief. Along the way, I suggest that many aspects of Rosenberg’s (unfortunately under-appreciated) epistemology are in fact defensible and are independent of his strong denial of truth's role in constraining epistemic practices. (shrink)

Building on influential work in virtue ethics, this collection of essays examines the categories of self, person, and anthropology as foci for comparative analysis. The papers unite reflections on theory and method with descriptive work that addresses thinkers from the modern West, Christian and Jewish Late Antiquity, early China, and other settings. The introduction sets out central methodological issues that are subsequently taken up in each essay, including the origin of the categories through which comparison proceeds, the status of these (...) categories in the process of comparison, and the goals of comparison. In considering the question of goals, the introduction draws connections between comparative study and historical study within one tradition. Both types of analysis can bridge the gap between historical and normative work by attending to the ways in which the questions a scholar asks - not just the answers found - vary from one context to another. (shrink)

A pervasive and influential argument appeals to trivial truths to demonstrate that the aim of inquiry is not the acquisition of truth. But the argument fails, for it neglects to distinguish between the complexity of the sentence used to express a truth and the complexity of the truth expressed by a sentence.

Building on influential work in virtue ethics, this collection of essays examines the categories of self, person, and anthropology as foci for comparative analysis. The papers unite reflections on theory and method with descriptive work that addresses thinkers from the modern West, Christian and Jewish Late Antiquity, early China, and other settings. The introduction sets out central methodological issues that are subsequently taken up in each essay, including the origin of the categories through which comparison proceeds, the status of these (...) categories in the process of comparison, and the goals of comparison. In considering the question of goals, the introduction draws connections between comparative study and historical study within one tradition. Both types of analysis can bridge the gap between historical and normative work by attending to the ways in which the questions a scholar asks - not just the answers found - vary from one context to another. (shrink)

Moral theory is no substitute for virtue, but virtue is no substitute for moral theory. Many critics of moral theory, with Richard Posner being one prominent recent example, complain that moral theory is too abstract, that it cannot generally be used to derive particular rights and wrongs, and that it does not improve people's characters. Posner complains that it is thus of no use to legal theorists. This article defends moral theory, and to some degree, philosophical inquiry in general, (...) against such pragmatic complaints. I argue that the primary goal of moral theorizing is not pragmatic, but theoretical. Moral theory aims at explanation, at answering certain kinds of questions about morality. Moral theory is meant to deepen our insight into morality but, to count as deepening our insight, it need not provide a formula for calculating what to do in a particular circumstance, nor must it make us more virtuous. I provide an account of the scope and nature of explanation provided by moral theory as well as an account of why such explanations can be worth having, even if they were to have few pragmatic consequences. (shrink)

In this essay, Jim Garrison explores the emerging scholarship establishing a Hegelian continuity in John Dewey’s thought from his earliest publications to the work published in the last decade of his life. The primary goals of this study are, first, to introduce this new scholarship to philosophers of education and, second, to extend this analysis to new domains, including Dewey’s theory of inquiry, universals, and creative action. Ultimately, Garrison’s analysis also refutes the traditional account that claims that William James (...) converted Dewey from Hegelian idealism, after which Charles Sanders Peirce inspired him to rebuild his instrumentalism along radically different lines. (shrink)

Departing from Anderson’s (2016) suggestion that there are three communities in Peirce’s thought corresponding to his three normative sciences of logic, ethics, and esthetics, I argue that these communities partake in a relationship of dependence similar to that found among the normative sciences. In this way, just as logic relies on ethics which relies on esthetics, so too would a logical community of inquirers rely on an ethical community of love, which would rely on an esthetic community of artists. A (...) community could conduct inquiry together only if it pursued the same goal; and it could pursue the same goal only if it first imaginatively construed it. Any logical or ethical community requires a shared imaginative repertoire of ideal ends. (shrink)

Amid criticism of medicine's scientific rigor and patient care, this book offers a philosophical examination of the nature and aims of medicine, and new perspectives on how these challenges can be addressed. It offers input for rethinking the agenda of medical research, healthcare delivery, and the education of healthcare personnel.

In a recent Editorial, Kious et al. (2023) put forward the claim that psychiatrists should resist calls to integrate concerns about epistemic injustice into their practice as this concept not only fails to add significantly to the current professional standards but would also lead to deleterious clinical outcomes. We believe their claim is mistaken, as it arises from several misconceptions about both the nature of epistemic injustice, and its clinical relevance. First, epistemic justice is conflated with what the authors term (...) ‘a quest for social justice’ that could ‘sideline principles of good clinical reasoning’ (Kious at al 2023: 4). Second, the claim about the impracticality and/or counterproductivity of epistemic injustice as a critical tool within psychiatric practice reflects a series of misconceptions about the normative framework from which this concept derives, so the standards they evaluate it against are ill-chosen. Pace Kious at al., fostering epistemic justice in any area of knowledge and inquiry could not – unwittingly or otherwise – inhibit the consideration of relevant evidence, restrict sound argument or facilitate the casual treatment of testimonies at face value. Third and final, this claim obfuscates some immediate ways in which a focus on epistemic justice as an integral goal will strengthen psychiatric practice according to its own internal standards. (shrink)

The first goal is to understand why Peirce describes his motto, “Do Not Block the Way of Inquiry,” as a corollary of the “first rule of reason,” why he believes it deserves to be inscribed on every wall of the city of philosophy, and what he has in mind when he characterizes the various barricades philosophers set up, the many obstacles they put in the path of inquiry. This soon leads us to important, substantive themes in Peirce’s (...) meta-philosophical, cosmological, metaphysical, logical, and epistemological work (§1). However, it also leads us to what might seem to be a tension in his account of the motives for inquiry. So the second goal is to track the source of this apparent tension, and to show how Peirce resolved it (§2). But the ultimate goal is to explain why Peirce’s warning against blocking the way of inquiry is no less important, given the condition of philosophy today, than it was when he offered it more than a century ago—perhaps even more so (§3). (shrink)

The undergraduate philosophy major is often seen as an irrelevant degree. While this may be attributed to a number of causes, it is also occasion for academic philosophers to reevaluate pedagogical methods at the undergraduate level. The author evaluates typical pedagogical methods and argues that overemphasizing epistemological goals of philosophical investigation (e.g. truth and justification) instrumentalizes the process of inquiry and stifles students’ philosophical imagination, resulting in the impression of philosophy’s irrelevance. An alternative model is offered on the basis (...) of John Dewey’s pattern of inquiry. It is argued that a pedagogy that attends to Dewey’s five phases of inquiry promotes greater attention to the process of inquiry itself, which emphasizes knowledge as social, open to revision, and pertinent to students’ needs and interests. The author concludes by considering the philosophical implications of implementing such a pedagogy. (shrink)

Pragmatists challenge a sharp separation of issues of theoretical and practical rationality. This can encourage a sort of anti-realism: our classifications and theories are shaped by our interests and practical concerns. However, it need not do this. A more fundamental theme is that cognition is itself an activity, the attempt to solve problems and discover truths effectively and responsibly. Evidence has to be collected, experiments have to be devised and carried out, dialogues must be engaged in with fellow inquirers, decisions (...) must be made about when we have scrutinized our opinions enough to trust our results. Even if our goals are “purely cognitive,” the attempt to achieve them through inquiry and deliberation is an activity. The normative standards that guide its conduct, like those governing any activity, will include standards of practical rationality. Indeed, we might suggest that a belief isjustifiedso long as it is the product of responsible, well-executed inquiry. (shrink)

This analysis holds that just as wisdom is good for its own sake, the effervescent perfuming of aesthetic pleasure in rasa, camatkāra, need not be useful for a goal or purpose. However, there is an intellectual virtue in the act of aestheticizing the affective response of wonder. The “here and now” of the aestheticized emotion of wonder, adbhutarasa, is a moment of focus and attention regained as a logically atemporal, even timeless moment. As the carvaṇā process unfolds, adbhutarasa invites (...) an epistemic agent to give time through focused attention, a contemplative tarrying, or an unhurried attentional prolongation. Looking across Platonic, Cartesian, and Kantian traditions to answer the question of epistemic value in rasa experiences, I argue that an agent is moved, and moves into an evaluative mode through the lenses of the sublime and taste. Renewed vigor to see, feel, and contemplate how things are, thickens epistemic emotions. The agentive freedom of the rasika to affectively resonate with ideas re-cognitively makes adbhuta a vehicle of inquiry like none other. (shrink)

Philosophy for children is an educational movement that includes diverse goals that are not always clearly articulated by theorists and practitioners. In order to navigate the multitude of aims found in the philosophy for children literature I propose distinguishing between the following categories of goals: aims of education; educational goals of philosophy for children ; goals of a community of philosophical inquiry ; goals of the facilitator; and goals of the children. The definitions of these various types are given (...) along with some examples of how the distinctions between them can be of aid in understanding the approaches, criticisms, and practice of philosophy for children. (shrink)

Social justice has been identified as a foundational moral commitment for global health research ethics. Yet what a commitment to social justice means for community engagement in such research has not been critically examined. This paper draws on the rich social justice literature from political philosophy to explore the normative question: What should the ethical goals of community engagement be if it is to help connect global health research to social justice? Five ethical goals for community engagement are proposed that (...) promote well-being, agency, and self-development, particularly for those considered disadvantaged and marginalized. The paper also considers how key terms used in the proposed goals should be defined using existing theories of health and social justice. This analysis is done to give global health researchers and their partners a better idea of what the ethical goals mean. Patterns of convergence amongst different theories are identified that support relying on particular definitions of key terms. (shrink)

The call for papers for this conference claims that 'the founders of modern philosophy of science, including Sir Karl Popper… saw it as part of their role to explain the authority of science’. It continues by declaring that 'A key motive for Popper's "demarcation criterion" distinguishing science from "pseudo-science" was to restrict the authority of science to disciplines which used the scientific method.' However, a closer look at Popper’s writing shows that this widespread view is incorrect. In fact, Popper declares (...) in the postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery: [I]t is all guesswork, doxa rather than epistēmē… Science has no authority… It represents… our hope of emancipating ourselves from ignorance and narrow-mindedness, from fear and superstition. And this includes… the superstitious belief in the authority of science itself. After briefly defending my contention, with reference to the work of Bartley and some of Popper's statements elsewhere, I will argue that Popper is better understood as attempting to demarcate inquiry from non-inquiry. I also hope to show that this humbler goal is worthwhile, especially when it comes to resisting calls to teach so-called ‘creation science’ in schools. Unfortunately, Popper has become associated with the relatively simplistic view that falsifiability is a demarcation criterion. But Popper recognized, even in the first edition of Logic of Scientific Discovery, that falsifiability alone does not suffice. He was cognisant of the problem posed by Duhem's thesis, and therefore stated: A system such as classical mechanics may be ‘scientific’ to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically—believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved—are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist. This would appear to be why Popper wrote of 'the non-existence of scientific method' above and beyond 'the one method of all rational discussion, and therefore of the natural sciences as well as of philosophy… stating one's problem clearly and examining its various proposed solutions critically'. In short, the critical approach is a crucial part of the demarcation puzzle. In the remainder of the talk, I will develop this solution to the demarcation problem in response to several possible criticisms. Chief among these is that 'creation scientists' do inquire but only with narrow scope. To address this criticism, I will draw on some of my recent work on the roles of criticism and dogmatism in science ; and in particular, I will consider if looking at matters from the group level can help. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Friedrich Nietzsche offers different opinions of the ancient Skeptics. On certain occasions, he praises them as philosophers of intellectual integrity, because they constantly question dogma and continue to inquire (ζητϵῖν) into the truth. He insists, however, that it is indispensable for every individual to adopt her own perspective in specific conditions, rather than suspend judgment as the Skeptics do. On other occasions, Nietzsche criticizes the ancient Skeptics because they separate their academic investigations from their philosophy of life and only (...) comply with conventions or apparent phenomena observed through sensations. Furthermore, he ridicules their ultimate goal – tranquility of mind (ἀταραξία) – as a product of feeble exhaustion. He himself is ready to embrace torments of life as part of the will to power. Although some similarities can be traced between Nietzsche and the ancient Skeptics, Nietzsche is more consistent in connecting his theoretical investigation and his philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

Epistemologists often claim that in addition to belief and disbelief there is a third, neutral, doxastic attitude. Various terms are used: ‘suspending judgment’, ‘withholding’, ‘agnosticism’. It is also common to claim that the factors relevant to the justification of these attitudes are epistemic in the narrow sense of being factors that bear on the strength or weakness of one’s epistemic position with respect to the target proposition. This paper addresses two challenges to such traditionalism about doxastic attitudes. The first concerns (...) the relevance of non-epistemic factors we might call "future-comparative" – e.g., that you’ll have more decisive evidence on whether p tomorrow – to the justification of suspending judgment. The second, from Jane Friedman, is to explain the point of the neutral attitude without appealing to inquiry and thus taking goal-related factors, which are not epistemic, such as the value of the goal or the prospects for finding means to achieve it, to bear on the justification of the neutral attitude. My defense of traditionalism relies on distinguishing three ways of being neutral on a question: agnosticism, inquiry and suspension of judgment. Traditionalism is saved because, of these, agnosticism alone is a genuine doxastic attitude. (shrink)

The criterion of "arguability" has tended to steer Critical Inquiry away from the kind of pluralism which defines itself as neutral, tolerant eclecticism toward a position which I would call "dialectical pluralism." This sort of pluralism is not content with mere diversity but insists on pushing divergent theories and practices toward confrontation and dialogue. Its aim is not the mere preservation or proliferation of variety but the weeding out of error, the elimination of trivial or marginal contentions, and the (...) clarification of fundamental and irreducible differences. The goal of dialectical pluralism is not liberal toleration of opposing views from a neutral ground but transformation, conversion, or, at least, the kind of communication which clarifies exactly what is at stake in any critical conflict. A good dramatization of Critical Inquiry's editorial ideal would be the dialogue of the devil and angel in Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell, an exchange in which each contestant enters into and criticizes the metaphysics of his contrary and which ends happily with the angel transformed into a devil. (shrink)

Why engage in inquiry? According to many philosophers, the goal of inquiring into some question is to come to know its answer. While this view holds considerable appeal, this paper argues that it stands in tension with another highly attractive thesis: knowledge does not require absolute certainty. Forced to choose between these two theses, I argue that we should reject the idea that inquiry aims at knowledge. I go on to develop an alternative view, according to which (...) inquiry aims at maximizing the epistemic value of our credences. This alternative view makes room for knowledge that falls shy of certainty, and it coheres nicely with a rich body of work in epistemic decision theory. I proceed to highlight the implications of this replacement for some important topics in epistemology, including the dogmatism paradox, the nature of interrogative attitudes, and the norm of practical reasoning. (shrink)

What is the relationship between inquiry and doubt? Understanding this relationship involves confronting a range of questions. These include: what is required to motivate inquiry, what does it take to legitimately settle inquiry, and what is the goal of inquiry? These questions will be approached via the consideration of an influential proposal regarding the relationship between belief, doubt and inquiry offered in recent work by Jane Friedman. In critiquing this proposal we will be able (...) to better understand what motivates a certain knowledge-based conception of the goal of inquiry, and also clarify the role of truth and doubt in inquiry. (shrink)

This volume reflects the development and theoretical foundation of a new paradigm for critical thinking based on inquiry. The field of critical thinking, as manifested in the Informal Logic movement, developed primarily as a response to the inadequacies of formalism to represent actual argumentative practice and to provide useful argumentative skills to students. Because of this, the primary focus of the field has been on informal arguments rather than formal reasoning. Yet the formalist history of the field is still (...) evident in its emphasis, with respect to both theory and pedagogy, on the structure and evaluation of individual, de-contextualized arguments. It is our view that such a view of critical thinking is excessively narrow and limited, failing to provide an understanding of argumentation as largely a matter of comparative evaluation of a variety of contending positions and arguments with the goal of reaching a reasoned judgment on an issue. As a consequence, traditional critical thinking instruction is problematic in failing to provide the reasoning skills that students need in order to accomplish this goal. Instead, the goal of critical thinking instruction has been seen largely as a defensive one: of learning to not fall prey to invalid, inadequate, or fallacious arguments. (shrink)

This paper connects two important debates in epistemology—to wit, on the goal of inquiry and on the nature of understanding—and offers a unified knowledge-based account of both.

The Community of Inquiry is a pragmatic philosophy concept by John Dewey (1916) representing a "social, cognitive and teaching presence" in a process of collaborative research and learning experience. This article is meant to present a case study based on the experience of forming a community of inquiry with students of a Romanian university. The report will include aspects like: the process of group forming and group facilitation to foster collaborative critical thinking, a few philosophical methods that aimed (...) the consolidation of the group as a community of learning and inquiry as well as the training of individual critical thinking, self-reflective posture and openness to otherness. Results reveal students' initial preoccupations with certainty and difficulties in self expression at the beginning of the semester and presented increasingly more attitudes characteristic to collaborative learning and inquiry by the end of the semester, which is probably an effect of deliberately setting up a specific group culture to facilitate this goal. (shrink)

This is the third and final volume of A System of Pragmatic Idealism, a series that will synthesize the life's work of the philosopher Nicholas Rescher. Rescher's numerous books and articles, which address almost every major philosophical topic, reflect a unified approach: the combination of pragmatism and idealism characteristic of his thinking throughout his career. The three related but independently readable books of the series present Rescher's system as a whole. In combining leading ideas of European continental idealism and American (...) pragmatism in a new way, Rescher has created an integrated philosophical position in which the central concepts of these two traditions become a coherent totality. The initial volume in the series was dedicated to epistemology, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of nature, while the second dealt with issues of value theory, ethics, and practical philosophy. In Volume III Rescher examines the nature of philosophical inquiry itself, seeking to affirm the classical conception of philosophy as a significant problem-solving enterprise that draws on the whole range of human experience to attempt to resolve the "big questions." Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Traditionally, two clinical models have been dominant in psychoanalysis: the classical paradigm, which views the analyst as an objective mirror, and the participant-observation paradigm, which views the analyst as an intersubjective participant-observer. According to John Fiscalini, an evolutionary shift in psychoanalytic consciousness has been taking place, giving rise to coparticipant inquiry, a third paradigm that represents a dramatic shift in analytic clinical theory and that has profound clinical implications. Coparticipant inquiry integrates the individualistic focus of the classical tradition (...) and the social focus of the participant-observer perspective. It is marked by a radical emphasis on analysts' and patients' analytic equality, emotional reciprocity, psychic symmetry, and relational mutuality. Unlike the previous two paradigms, coparticipant inquiry suggests that we are all inherently communal beings and, yet, are simultaneously innately self-fulfilling, unique individuals. The book looks closely at the therapeutic dialectics of the personal and interpersonal selves and discusses narcissism -- the perversion of the self -- within its clinical role as the neurosis that contextualizes all other neuroses. Thus the goal of this book is to define coparticipant inquiry; articulate its major principles; analyze its implications for a theory of the self and the treatment of narcissism; and discuss the therapeutic potential of the coparticipant field and the coparticipant nature of transference, resistance, therapeutic action, and analytic vitality. Fiscalini explores "analytic space," which marks the psychic limit of coparticipant activity; the "living through process," which, he suggests, subtends all analytic change; and "openness to singularity," which is essential to analytic vitality. _Coparticipant Psychoanalysis_ brings crucial insights to clinical theory and practice and is an invaluable resource for psychoanalysts and therapists, as well as students and practitioners of psychology, psychiatry, and social work. (shrink)

Traditionally, two clinical models have been dominant in psychoanalysis: the classical paradigm, which views the analyst as an objective mirror, and the participant-observation paradigm, which views the analyst as an intersubjective participant-observer. According to John Fiscalini, an evolutionary shift in psychoanalytic consciousness has been taking place, giving rise to coparticipant inquiry, a third paradigm that represents a dramatic shift in analytic clinical theory and that has profound clinical implications. Coparticipant inquiry integrates the individualistic focus of the classical tradition (...) and the social focus of the participant-observer perspective. It is marked by a radical emphasis on analysts' and patients' analytic equality, emotional reciprocity, psychic symmetry, and relational mutuality. Unlike the previous two paradigms, coparticipant inquiry suggests that we are all inherently communal beings and, yet, are simultaneously innately self-fulfilling, unique individuals. The book looks closely at the therapeutic dialectics of the personal and interpersonal selves and discusses narcissism -- the perversion of the self -- within its clinical role as the neurosis that contextualizes all other neuroses. Thus the goal of this book is to define coparticipant inquiry; articulate its major principles; analyze its implications for a theory of the self and the treatment of narcissism; and discuss the therapeutic potential of the coparticipant field and the coparticipant nature of transference, resistance, therapeutic action, and analytic vitality. Fiscalini explores "analytic space," which marks the psychic limit of coparticipant activity; the "living through process," which, he suggests, subtends all analytic change; and "openness to singularity," which is essential to analytic vitality. _Coparticipant Psychoanalysis_ brings crucial insights to clinical theory and practice and is an invaluable resource for psychoanalysts and therapists, as well as students and practitioners of psychology, psychiatry, and social work. (shrink)

What sort of epistemic positions are compatible with inquiries driven by interrogative attitudes like wonder and puzzlement? The ignorance norm provides a partial answer: interrogative attitudes directed at a particular question are never compatible with knowledge of the question’s answer. But some are tempted to think that interrogative attitudes are incompatible with weaker positions like belief as well. This paper defends that the ignorance norm is exhaustive. All epistemic positions weaker than knowledge directed at the answer to a question are (...) compatible with having an interrogative attitude towards that question. We offer two arguments for this conclusion. The first is based on considerations about the role of hedging in inquiry. The second is conditional on considerations related to the aim of inquiry as a goal-directed activity. (shrink)

In this important new work, Haack develops an original theory of empirical evidence or justification, and argues its appropriateness to the goals of inquiry. In so doing, Haack provides detailed critical case studies of Lewis's foundationalism; Davidson's and Bonjour's coherentism; Popper's 'epistemology without a knowing subject'; Quine's naturalism; Goldman's reliabilism; and Rorty's, Stich's, and the Churchlands' recent obituaries of epistemology.

What is it to know more? By what metric should the quantity of one's knowledge be measured? I start by examining and arguing against a very natural approach to the measure of knowledge, one on which how much is a matter of how many. I then turn to the quasi-spatial notion of counterfactual distance and show how a model that appeals to distance avoids the problems that plague appeals to cardinality. But such a model faces fatal problems of its own. (...) Reflection on what the distance model gets right and where it goes wrong motivates a third approach, which appeals not to cardinality, nor to counterfactual distance, but to similarity. I close the paper by advocating this model and briefly discussing some of its significance for epistemic normativity. In particular, I argue that the 'trivial truths' objection to the view that truth is the goal of inquiry rests on an unstated, but false, assumption about the measure of knowledge, and suggest that a similarity model preserves truth as the aim of belief in an intuitively satisfying way. (shrink)

I articulate Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of mathematical education as related to his conception of mathematics, the nature of its method of inquiry, and especially, the reasoning abilities required for mathematical inquiry. The main thesis is that Peirce’s philosophy of mathematical education primarily aims at fostering the development of the students’ semeiotic abilities of imagination, concentration, and generalization required for conducting mathematical inquiry by way of experimentation upon diagrams. This involves an emphasis on the relation between theory (...) and practice and between mathematics and other fields including the arts and sciences. For achieving its goals, the article is divided in three sections. First, I expound Peirce’s philosophical account of mathematical reasoning. Second, I illustrate this account by way of a geometrical example, placing special emphasis on its relation to mathematical education. Finally, I put forth some Peircean philosophical principles for mathematical education. (shrink)