A symbol is defined as a species of sign. The concept of a sign coincides with Skinner's (1938) concept of a discriminative stimulus. Symbols differ from other signs in five respects: (1) They are stimuli which the organism can both respond to and produce, either as a self-directed stimulus (as in thinking) or as a stimulus for another individual with a predictably similar response from the recipient in each case. (2) they act as discriminative stimuli for the same kind (...) of object for all members of the verbal community within which they function as a symbols; (3) they acquire their properties by virtue of arbitrary social convention rather than any natural and intrinsic connection between the sign and what it is a sign of; (4) competent members of the verbal community can both produce the appropriate symbol in response to a naturally occurring sign of the presence of the object or a sample of the kind of object which the symbol stands for and select the appropriate object when presented with the symbol; (5) they form stimulus equivalence classes of the kind demonstrated in the matching-to-sample task (Sidman, 1971; Sidman and Tailby, 1982) both with other symbols having the same meaning and, more important, with the naturally-occurring non-symbolic signs of the presence of the object or kind of object which the symbol stands for. (shrink)

(2003). Thinking in place: Comments on Scott Pratt's Native Pragmatism. Philosophy & Geography: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 225-236.

'Why did the window break when it was hit by the stone? Because the window is brittle and the stone is hard; hardness and brittleness are powers, dispositional properties or dispositions.' Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. This book is a record of the debate on the nature of dispositions between three distinguished philosophers - D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin and U. T. Place - who have been thinking about dispositions all their working lives. Their (...) distinctive accounts cover many of the issues surrounding dispositions such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation. Dispositions illuminates this central topic in analytic philosophy and at the same time highlights deeper concerns of metaphysics. (shrink)

Summary Why and how is the Gestalt theorists’ concept of productive thinking particularly suitable for being applied to the educational question of how student motivation can be encouraged, thus providing an important condition for self-regulated, intrinsically motivated learning? An answer to this question has been sought using an approach to the fostering of text comprehension ability, based upon the features specific to productive thinking, originally identified by Wertheimer and Duncker. Firstly, these specific features are dealt with and their (...) educational implications compared with those deriving from the definitions of problem-solving used most frequently in educational research. Secondly, an analysis is made of the process by which the features specific to productive thinking are turned into the conditions for a kind of text analysis suitable for designing an instructional project aimed at enhancing text comprehension ability and, at the same time, encouraging intrinsic motivation and self-regulation on the part of the learner. Thirdly, an educational project centred on the thinking-aloud poor reader is described, where thinking aloud and reflection–response are combined in order to guarantee the maximum level of intrinsic motivation. In the concluding section, the most important features of the project are discussed in relation to reciprocal teaching and scaffolding. (shrink)

The idea of place--topos--runs through Martin Heidegger's thinking almost from the very start. It can be seen not only in his attachment to the famous hut in Todtnauberg but in his constant deployment of topological terms and images and in the situated, "placed" character of his thought and of its major themes and motifs. Heidegger's work, argues Jeff Malpas, exemplifies the practice of "philosophical topology." In Heidegger and the Thinking of Place, Malpas examines the topological aspects of Heidegger's (...) thought and offers a broader elaboration of the philosophical significance of place. Doing so, he provides a distinct and productive approach to Heidegger as well as a new reading of other key figures--notably Kant, Aristotle, Gadamer, and Davidson, but also Benjamin, Arendt, and Camus. Malpas, expanding arguments he made in his earlier book _Heidegger's Topology_, discusses such topics as the role of place in philosophical thinking, the topological character of the transcendental, the convergence of Heideggerian topology with Davidsonian triangulation, the necessity of mortality in the possibility of human life, the role of materiality in the working of art, the significance of nostalgia, and the nature of philosophy as beginning in wonder. Philosophy, Malpas argues, begins in wonder and begins in place and the experience of place. The place of wonder, of philosophy, of questioning, he writes, is the very topos of thinking. (shrink)

Plants are commonly considered immobile, in contrast to humans and other animals. But vegetal existence involves many place-based forms of change: stems growing upward, roots spreading outward, fronds unfurling in response to sunlight, seeds traveling across wide distances, and other intricate relationships with the surrounding world. How do plants as sessile, growing, decaying, and metamorphosing beings shape the places they inhabit, and how are they shaped by them? How do human places interact with those of plants-in lived experience; (...) in landscape painting; in cultivation and contemplation; in forests, fields, gardens, and cities? Examining these questions and many more, Plants in Place is a collaborative study of vegetal phenomenology at the intersection of Edward S. Casey's phenomenology of place and Michael Marder's plant-thinking. It focuses on both the microlevel of the dynamic constitution of plant edges or a child's engagement with moss and the macrolevel of habitats that include the sociality of trees. This compelling portrait of plants and their places provides readers with new ways to appreciate the complexity and vitality of vegetal life. Eloquent, descriptively rich, and insightful, the book also shows how the worlds of plants can enhance our understanding and experience of place more broadly. (shrink)

Patients suffering from delusions of thought insertion (TI) report that external agents of different nature have placed thoughts into their minds. The symptom involves distressing feelings of intromission and exposition, loss of mental privacy, diminished ego boundaries, and a – often neglected – peculiar “physicality”. A dominant approach within cognitive sciences characterizes TI as involving alterations in the experience of being the author of certain thoughts. For the advocates of this so-called Standard Approach to TI, the absence of a sense (...) of agency for certain thoughts would lead to their externalization, this explaining the general structure of the clinical reports. In this paper, I problematize the phenomenological picture of everyday thoughts that the standard approach adopts when trying to make sense of TI. I claim that the standard approach neglects two more fundamental aspects of TI, namely the multimodal nature of thinking in psychosis and the deeply social dimension of the phenomenology of delusions in schizophrenia. After this, a broader descriptive phenomenological characterization of TI is provided. Finally, I establish some connections between the characterization of TI developed here and current research in social perception and clinical practice. (shrink)

Drawing on a range of sources in philosophy and literature, but with particular reference to the work of Heidegger, makes a compelling case for the importance of place in philosophical discourse.

: Two major philosophers of the twentieth century, the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the seminal Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitarō are examined here in an attempt to discern to what extent their ideas may converge. Both are viewed as expressing, each through the lens of his own tradition, a world in transition with the rise of modernity in the West and its subsequent globalization. The popularity of Heidegger's thought among Japanese philosophers, despite its own admitted limitation to (...) the Western "history of being," is connected to Nishida's opening of a uniquely Japanese path in its confrontation with Western philosophy. The focus is primarily on their later works (the post-Kehre Heidegger and the works of Nishida that have been designated "Nishida philosophy"), in which each in his own way attempts to overcome the subject-object dichotomy inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics by looking to a deeper structure from out of which both subjectivity and objectivity are derived and which embraces both. For Heidegger, the answer lies in being as the opening of unconcealment, from out of which beings emerge, and for Nishida, it is the place of nothingness within which beings are co-determined in their oppositions and relations. Concepts such as Nishida's "discontinuous continuity," "absolutely self-contradictory identity" (between one and many, whole and part, world and things), the mutual interdependence of individuals, and the self-determination of the world through the co-relative self-determination of individuals, and Heidegger's "simultaneity" (zugleich) and "within one another" (ineinander) (of unconcealment and concealment, presencing and absencing), and their "between" (Zwischen) and "jointure" (Fuge) are examined. Through a discussion of these ideas, the suggestion is made of a possible "transition" (Übergang) of both Western and Eastern thinking, in their mutual encounter, both in relation to each other and each in relation to its own past history, leading to both a self-discovery in the other and to a simultaneous self-reconstitution. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the concept of thinking in Hannah Arendt's writings. Arendt's interest in the experience of thinking allowed her to develop a concept of thinking that is distinct from other forms of mental activity such as cognition and problem solving. For her, thinking is an unending, unpredictable and destructive activity without fixed outcomes. Her understanding of thinking is distinguished from other approaches to thinking that equate it with, for example, problem solving (...) or knowledge. Examples of a ‘problem-solving’, skills-based approach to thinking that place a premium on behavioural change are drawn from the context of the prison. I offer an alternative example of thinking with others from my philosophy classes in the prison. I draw upon Arendt's insights to develop a concept of ‘thinking-in-concert’. Whilst Arendt believes that thinking must be a solitary activity, I argue that the concept of ‘thinking-in-concert’ helps to capture experiences of thinking with others in a manner that is more hesitant and provisional than some descriptions of communities of enquiry or democratic education. The embodied presence of others matters when ‘thinking-in-concert’. I describe this approach as educational as well as conversational. This helps to communicate the way in which we turn towards others and may be pulled up short by them as we strive to think together or experience moments of conversion or insight whilst enjoying the ordinary activity of talking with others. This concept may help us to understand the difference between the experience of thinking, teaching and learning when we are physically present to one another and the experience of virtual learning or teaching. (shrink)

What is the significance of diverse writing styles in contemporary Continental thought? I take Maurice Merleau-Ponty's latest texts and Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical autobiography as exemplary, demonstrating the primacy of stylistic linguistic expression for their philosophically self-reflective tasks. I situate this primacy historically, by discussing in successive chapters the Aristotelian and Husserlian presuppositional legacies that are strategically countered by their writing styles. I draw on the contemporary dialogue of literary theory and literary hermeneutics to develop an interpretive understanding of the critical (...) place of reading in its relation to the kind of philosophical prose discussed. I apply these insights to an interpretive reading of Luce Irigaray's feminist texts. (shrink)

This article suggests itself as a movement towards a theory of thinking in photography – that is to say, of thinking photographs. The notion of art as related to thinking is by no means a contemporary one. Within this tradition that has its roots in the advent of modernity, artworks – and particularly paintings – have long been viewed as a form of both thought and thinking. Photography’s place within this tradition, however, is not an easy (...) one. Many of the philosophical accounts surrounding thinking in painting focus on the devices through which painting is said to be thinking. Hubert Damisch and Gilles Deleuze offer the two most comprehensive accounts on this topic, but are the thinking devices proposed by them applicable to photography? Through the discussion of these theories, this article maps the existing philosophical landscape vis-à-vis the thinking image: locating photographic thought within that landscape is the first step towards understanding the peculiarities of photographic thinking. (shrink)

This article suggests itself as a movement towards a theory of thinking in photography – that is to say, of thinking photographs. The notion of art as related to thinking is by no means a contemporary one. Within this tradition that has its roots in the advent of modernity, artworks – and particularly paintings – have long been viewed as a form of both thought and thinking. Photography’s place within this tradition, however, is not an easy (...) one. Many of the philosophical accounts surrounding thinking in painting focus on the devices through which painting is said to be thinking. Hubert Damisch and Gilles Deleuze offer the two most comprehensive accounts on this topic, but are the thinking devices proposed by them applicable to photography? Through the discussion of these theories, this article maps the existing philosophical landscape vis-à-vis the thinking image: locating photographic thought within that landscape is the first step towards understanding the peculiarities of photographic thinking. (shrink)

Spatial thought is undergoing somewhat of a renaissance in nursing. Building on a long disciplinary tradition of conceptualizing and studying ‘nursing environment’, the past twenty years has witnessing the establishment and refinement of explicitly geographical nursing research. This article – part one in a series of two – reviews the perspectives taken to date, ranging from historical precedent in classical nursing theory through to positivistic spatial science, political economy, and social constructivism in contemporary inquiry. This discussion sets up part two, (...) which considers the potential of non‐representational theory for framing future studies. (shrink)

This paper adopts a relational, also known as a topological, approach to food accessibility—the idea that food spaces are best understood as relational becomings rather than as voids filled exclusively with mass and address. It is animated by an experimental spirit, in terms of the methods employed, the data collected, and by how those data are brought together, which together better enriches inductive theorizing. The project looks at the daily macro-mobilities—trips from one GPS coordinate to another—of 70 Coloradoans, triangulated with (...) qualitative semi-structured interview data. Data collection occurred over three phases: baseline interviews, which lasted approximately 45 min; 30-day study period, which involved using a GPS tracking app. on their mobile phones; and follow-up interviews that lasted roughly two hours. The paper, through inductive theorizing and methodological experimentation, contributes to the critical food mapping scholarship in three ways: first, by looking at rural and urban food environments and livelihoods ; second, by focusing on mobilities as opposed to fixities ; and, lastly, by its conceptual innovations attributed to phenomena such as life course and geographies of care. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s Discourse on Thinking lays out a troubling view of the world which holds true today much as it did at the time of the speech: "The world now appears as an object open to the attacks of calculative thought, attacks that nothing is believed able any longer to resist. Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry. This relation of man to the world as such, in principle a technical one, developed (...) in the seventeenth century first and only in Europe. It long remained unknown in other continents, and it was altogether alien to former ages and histories" (50). As an architecture professor in an age of modern technology, I believe it critical that design students cultivate an ability to see more comprehensively and learn how to think more meditatively (as Heidegger later suggests). Coming into a state of attunement with context, culture, and environment must be considered to be the most basic criteria for building in the world, as these are the elements that preserve the feeling and identity of ‘place’. Considering being-in-the-world as a stance that necessarily moves more toward complex understandings of the environment, this paper outlines an effort given to the pedagogical implementation of Martin Heidegger’s description of the phenomenon of ‘world’, the three-fold structure for Being-in as a means of teaching students a more attuned comportment toward place, building, and site. I will discuss how these ideas were used in an preliminary design exercise, then clarified and elaborated through a lecture on Terrance Malick’s film The New World. (shrink)

Book review of KOPČÁKOVÁ, Slávka, (Ed.) – ORIŇÁKOVÁ, Slávka – ZUBAL, Pavol (2021) Tobias Gottfried Schröer (1791-1850). Estetika ako vízia lepšieho človeka. [Tobias Gottfried Schroer (1791-1850). Aesthetics as a vision of a better person.] Prešov: University of Prešov, Faculty of Arts. 321 p. ISBN 978-80-555-2767-3.

The text approaches the Hegelian dynamic between truth and certainty as it appear in the beginning of the Phenomenology as a question of truth and the sense of truth. Since this difference exceeds a merely epistemic stance and cannot be captured in terms of conceptual content, it leads to another mode of inquiry, namely, to that of a different relatedness to knowledge. Hegel’s emphasis, as I will attempt to show, on thinking the question of self-relatedness of thought in terms (...) of experience (which is always negative) in the first place, may provide a means to identify such a mode of self-relatedness that precedes the “self” of consciousness. Such an approach would put the question of the self both against its rigid modern critiques on the one hand, and its contemporary dissolution into naturalistic objectified oblivion on the other. In this way, the essay also challenges Heidegger’s critical stance towards the Hegelian notion of “the experience of consciousness” by presenting it rather as a “consciousness of experience.” For here this double genitive expresses a repetition or return that appears as a kind of afterimage of a still-life. (shrink)

Heidegger's account of technology has been discussed widely in the philosophy of education. This chapter focuses on the concept of Gelassenheit as developed in Heidegger's later thought as a key to overcoming technological ways of thinking. It shows the relevance of this to aspects of education, especially to the ways that teaching can be enhanced in order to do better justice both to learners and to what is studied. The discourse of education today seems to be preoccupied particularly with (...) clarity and transparency. It requires data to see things through and thus to monitor and control what has been and should be taught and learned. Cyberspace has extraordinary potential for building new communities, places for solidarity, as shown by developments such as the #MeToo movement. Yet vigilance is needed in respect of the ongoing development of technology, in order to witness how it opens up the world in unforeseen ways. (shrink)

If we take a bird’s-eye view of the history of philosophical ideas and try to assess the place the problems of modality hold in it, it is likely that we will gain the impression that they are not among the priorities of philosophical thinking of the essence of human being. A closer look at some classical theses, however, can provide us with different answers. In § 76 of Critique of Judgement, which is actually “just” a comment on the basic (...) text, Kant explains that “For human reason it is of absolute necessity to distinguish between the possibility and reality of things”. Kant helps us to include modality in the very metaphysical definition of the human being. That is why we can say: human being is a modal being before being “a rational being”, “a social animal” or “homo faber”. In my opinion that “before” should be understood in a strictly metaphysical sense and it should help us to discover a non-trivial basis and principle of philosophical anthropology. It is my thesis that philosophical anthropology should place modality in the very definition of human nature and consider human being as a possibilia entis. We could illustrate the fundamental character of modality by demonstrating that modality is at the basis of constituting time as temporality. In view of this position only the modal being has a time in the sense of temporality. Or, to put it in a different way, we can see in nature only changes, but not temporal phenomena in the strict sense of the concept of time perceived as temporality. (shrink)

Lecture was the most prevalent teaching style in the colleges and universities we attended. Hired as a lecturer by a local university, the lead author choose to approach teaching based on two principles: first to teach the way she preferred to learn, which is in groups, and second to be both a teacher and a fellow learner.Ten adult practitioners were enrolled in the graduate course Iisted as “The Trainer/Manager as Coach.” This article includes their experiences along with those of the (...) instructor / facilitator.Critical thinking and critical self-reflection are ways to help participants explore assumptions about coaching and particularly about their roles as coaches in the workplace. Critical thinking is a means of examining assumptions by identifying patterns in ourselves and in others-patterns that influence our thinking and subsequent actions. Critical self-reflection is “challenging the vaIidity of presuppositions in prior learning” (Mezirow, 1990, p. 14). Our purpose together was to develop critical thinking skills and practice critical self-reflection as they related to coaching within our practices.Participants used time between class sessions for integration of learning and self-reflection on their own assumptive worlds. Students participated in electronic dialogue and in action research. The online dialogue provided opportunities to share experiences from our places of work. It further served as a collaborative means for building a knowledge base from onIine discussion of coaching literature.Action research is a means of studying one’s practice for the purpose of improvement. Students applied an action research model to a workplace problem that involved them in the role of coach.The results were transformational for all co-Iearners. Changes took pIace in our approaches to coaching. Changes in the focus of coaching, from focusing on the coach to focusing on the learner, are prevalent. (shrink)

What is the place and value of reflection in people’s lives? The answer requires a careful discussion about the relationship between our epistemic performances, our intellectual capabilities and competencies, our affective relationships with the environment, our actions and our interpersonal interactions. It is a fact that for us to navigate and interact with the world and with our society, we sometimes think about our reasons, we give reasons, we change our minds, and even think about our habits and character traits (...) in order to make them virtuous. And it seems that at least most of the times, it is by reflection that we do it. -/- This book brings together the following chapters: “Animal Versus Reflective Orders of Epistemic Competence” by Ernest Sosa; “The Status of Reflection in Virtue Epistemology” by Christopher Kelp; “The Social Value of Reflection” by John Greco; “Disagreement, Intellectual Humility, and Reflection” by Duncan Pritchard; “Philosophical Reflection and Rashness” by Plinio J. Smith; “Between Feeling and Symbolization: Philosophical Paths to Thinking about Oneself” by Robert E. Innis; “Mirrors and Reflexive processes” by Raffaele De Luca Picione; “Bodily origin of self-reflection and its socially extended aspects” by Shogo Tanaka; and “Psychological reflection, thought and imagination as epistemic skills” by Miika Vähämaa. (shrink)

Environmental changes on a vast scale have motivated philosophers to consider problems related to intergenerational justice and future generations of people, nonhumans, and the earth they inhabit. How should the field of aesthetics respond? The aim of this special issue of “Studi di Estetica” is to create space for scholars to bring temporality and intergenerational aesthetics more deeply into the field. The articles here are focused on temporality in art, nature, modified environments and relationships between them. In this introductory essay, (...) I explore, first, how temporality features in the phenomena of aesthetic experience of environment, in living and nonliving things, creatures, situations, places, settings, and processes. Second, I address how the resources of the aesthetic subject (senses, imagination, emotions, and knowledge) grapple with environmental temporality and the future. To conclude the essay, I sketch out what it means to show “aesthetic concern” for future generations by drawing on ideas from environmental virtue aesthetics. (shrink)

This book looks at the television saga Downton Abbey to explore a variety of interpersonal issues that are still relevant today. This includes the emotional importance of particular places; how war and epidemics tell us about life in peacetime and in good health; as well as manners, women's roles, class and more.

Religion, defined as ‘the idea of a state that transcends ourselves and our world and the working out of the consequences of that idea’, may influence the ethical thinking of scientists and engineers in two ways. The first is at the level of the individual and how personal beliefs affect the choice of research, design or development projects, relationships with other researchers and the understandings of the consequences of research on other aspects of life. The second level is that (...) of the social and cultural setting in which scientists and engineers work; how society decides which research to sponsor, how to apply the results of scientific discovery and which technology it chooses to develop and for what purposes. In neither of these areas is religious belief a necessary condition for scientists and engineers to pursue one course of action rather than another. The existence of religious belief within the individual and society is, though, part of the ethical framework in which scientist and engineers work and therefore something to which attention should be paid. Religion provides a particular perspective on what should be. Conversely science and technology provide information on the nature of the person and the universe in which we live, which must be taken into account when theologians and religious moralists apply their ethical norms and principles. (shrink)

This paper uses academic and lay discourses to examine the ways in which "the city" is constructed in its relationship to "wildlife." The paper examines the negative and essentialized ways in which the city's relationship to wildlife has been represented in postcolonial theory and animal geography. The paper further explores these theoretical framings of the city in the empirical context of the relocation of an urban, flying fox colony, which provides opportunities to reconsider these bounded conceptualizations of the city.

In this paper I describe the place of naive realism in Russell’s changing accounts of perception. I argue ‎for the following conclusions: (1) The early period, 1898-1910: I am inclined to think that the naïve ‎realism that Russell embraced so enthusiastically early on may not have been intended as a naïve ‎realism about perception, but as a metaphysical or semantical thesis. (2) The Problems of Philosophy ‎‎(1912): Russell abandons naïve realism (if, in fact, he ever held it) and presents a (...) sense-datum version ‎of representative realism. (3) “On Matter” (1912): here we see Russell’s best attempt to defend ‎something very close to the standard doctrine of naïve realism. The objects of perception—the ‎‎“everyday material objects such as caterpillars and Cadillacs”—have, of course, undergone severe ‎reconstruction. But the resulting picture does capture the spirit of the doctrine. (4) The period from ‎‎1914 to 1927: though Russell’s thinking about perception underwent some significant changes during ‎this period—the sense datum theory is replaced by neutral monism—I try to show that the ‎distinction between the matter of physics and the thing of common sense is a constant feature of ‎Russell’s changing views. And I suggest that our perceptual relation the thing of common ‎sense (as logically reconstructed by Russell) can usefully be viewed as a limited sort of naïve realism. ‎‎(5) The period after 1927: the thing of common sense no longer features in Russell’s account of our ‎perceptual access to the world. The things we perceive are percepts, located in our private spaces. The ‎only material objects of which these percepts are parts are our brains. All other material objects are ‎beyond our perceptual reach and are accessible only via inference. This is the end of anything ‎resembling the traditional view of naïve realism in Russell’s account of perception. ‎. (shrink)

In Understanding Moral Obligation, Robert Stern presents an interesting account of the history of ethics from Kant through Hegel and Kierkegaard. I argue that Stern in this account misinterprets Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Works of Love by reading them as presenting a Divine Command Theory of moral obligation, as a philosophical account meant to compete with those of Kant and Hegel. It mistakes, indeed subverts, Kierkegaard's purposes to read him as engaging in a philosophical dialectic in these texts. I (...) argue that Stern's reading renders Kierkegaard's contribution internal to a philosophical dialectic that Kierkegaard means to speak against, from a position expressly and resolutely external to it. (shrink)

Since the famous passage in which Socrates (Plato 38a5-6) says that the unexamined, and therefore non-reflected, life is not worth living, “reflection” has been a diffuse and iterant term in ethics, moral philosophy, epistemology, political philosophy, but also in psychology. This volume opens a new perspective on the topic of reflection, considering the most recent approaches in both philosophy (namely in epistemology ) and cultural psychology.

The articles included in this issue represent some of the most recent thinking in the area of critical thinking in higher education. While the emphasis is on work being done in the Australasian region, there are also papers from the USA and UK that demonstrate the international interest in advancing research in the area. -/- ‘Critical thinking’ in the guise of the study of logic and rhetoric has, of course, been around since the days of the ancient (...) Greeks and the early beginnings of universities. In a narrower sense, critical thinking has been central to higher education as a desirable attribute of graduates since at least the beginning of the twentieth century. The work of John Dewey, and others, emphasised the importance of ‘good habits of thinking’ as early as 1916. In 1945, the Harvard Committee placed emphasis on the importance of ‘thinking effectively’ as one of three desirable educational abilities in their General education in a free society. This was later endorsed in 1961 by the US-based Educational Policies Commission: ‘The purpose which runs through and strengthens all other educational purposes … is the development of the ability to think’ (Kennedy, Fisher, & Ennis, 1991, pp. 11–12). -/- In recent times, universities have made a point of emphasising the importance of critical thinking as a ‘generic skill’ that is central to most, if not all, subjects. There is not a university today (in Australia at least) that does not proudly proclaim that their graduates will – as a result of a degree program in their institution – learn to think critically. Further, there is rarely a subject taught that does not offer the opportunity to acquire skills in critical thinking. However, where is the evidence that we teach critical thinking in higher education? Disturbingly, despite our best intentions, it appears we may be teaching very little of it. (shrink)

A Place for Beauty in the Therapeutic Encounter is written for all psychotherapists, counsellors, and psychologists who practise under the broad banner of psychoanalytic thinking. It is also for anyone who loves beauty and wants to think more about its place in the mind.

Thinking of Death places Plato's Euthydemus among the dialogues that surround the trial and death of Socrates. A premonition of philosophy's fate arrives in the form of Socrates' encounter with the two-headed sophist pair, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who appear as if they are the ghost of the Socrates of Aristophanes' Thinkery. The pair vacillate between choral ode and rhapsody, as Plato vacillates between referring to them in the dual and plural number in Greek. Gwenda-lin Grewal's close reading explores (...) how the structure of the dialogue and the pair's back-and-forth arguments bear a striking resemblance to thinking itself: in its immersive remove from reality, thinking simulates death even as it cannot conceive of its possibility. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus take this to an extreme, and so emerge as the philosophical dream and sophistic nightmare of being disembodied from substance. The Euthydemus is haunted by philosophy's tenuous relationship to political life. This is played out in the narration through Crito's implied criticism of Socrates-the phantom image of the Athenian laws-and in the drama itself, which appears to take place in Hades. Thinking of death thus brings with it a lurid parody of the death of thinking: the farce of perfect philosophy that bears the gravity of the city's sophistry. Grewal also provides a new translation of the Euthydemus that pays careful attention to grammatical ambiguities, nuances, and wit in ways that substantially expand the reader's access to the dialogue's mysteries. (shrink)

People have always wondered how thinking takes place and what thoughts are constructed from. We typically experience our thoughts as involving pictorial (or sensory) contents or as being in words. Although this idea has been enshrined in psychology as the “dual code” theory of reasoning and memory, serious questions have been raised concerning this view. It appears that whatever the form of our thoughts it is unlikely that it is anything like our experience of them. But if thought is (...) not in pictures or words, what form does it take? If we do not sometimes think in words, then what actually goes on when we think by engaging in an “inner dialogue”? And if we do not sometimes think in pictures, what goes on when we reason by creating and examining “mental images”? (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the political and educational relevance of Hannah Arendt’s account of friendship. Drawing from Arendt’s central works on friendship, we offer a novel interpretation of the concept by connecting the notion with the idea of educational ‘love for the world’, amor mundi. With this interpretation, we seek to demonstrate that the concept of friendship has both direct educational and indirect political significance. Thereby, we distinguish our interpretation from two previous understandings of the educational relevance of the (...) Arendtian notion of friendship—those by (1) Aaron Schutz and Marie G. Sandy, and (2) Morten T. Korsgaard—in which friendship is either assigned a specifically political role (as in (1)) or its significance to education is narrowly understood (as in (2)). We argue our interpretation of friendship offers both a new contribution to the understanding of the relationship between education and politics in the context of Arendt scholarship, and a novel way of thinking about the educational significance of friendship in the context of contemporary democratic politics, especially the prevailing political polarization. (shrink)