23 research outputs found

    Virtue Epistemology:Some Implications for Education

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    The new field of virtue epistemology has implications for educational debate. In order to identify these implications, I explore the seminal writings of Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski and develop them in directions promising for education. Both see knowledge as true belief arising in a socially-situated cognitive agent from epistemically-virtuous acts, rather than the traditional construal of true belief to which an idealised, individual knower has a duty to assent because of particular properties of the belief. They differ in emphasis, however: Sosa stresses reliable mechanisms, while Zagzebski accentuates virtuous motivation. In dealing with Sosa’s reliabilist virtue epistemology, I analyse and build on his precursor Robert Nozick’s model in ways propitious for education, including an extension of his use of formal logic, and the importation of some concepts from artificial intelligence theory. One significant outcome of my work on reliabilist virtue epistemology is the importance of subjunctive conditionals, and thus a more nuanced view of educational propositional targets, involving both p and ~p. Sosa’s two-tier model of knowledge is also addressed. I compare Zagzebski to her historical forebear Aristotle, and then develop some lines of thought congenial to education. Zagzebski’s responsibilist virtue epistemology leads to named intellectual virtues. I supplement these and show how they can be co-ordinated between teacher and learner. Substantial consideration is also given to other regarding epistemic virtue and to testimony. The model of learning and teaching defended amounts to virtuous belief-modification, carried out by an epistemic agent (the learner), using intellectual virtue to bring his doxastic web into closer cognitive alignment with reality via intersubjective triangulation using the webs of others (particularly that of the teacher). I argue that a combination of the two approaches – virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism – yields a richer, more decent basis for education than rival conceptions, such as technical rationality, can provide

    Practical Wisdom in Literary Studies

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    This study explores the role of practical wisdom, an ability that we know but cannot explicitly tell, in literary studies. We argue from philosophical, cognitive, and literary perspectives that we cannot articulate all the things that we know and are able to do in literary interpretation. From the philosophical perspective, we discuss Gadamer’s understanding of the originally Aristotelian concept, phronesis, which (1) always depends on the concrete situation, (2) cannot be formalized into rules, and (3) can only be learned by experience. From the cognitive perspective, we argue that, according to the emerging psychology of wisdom, the three features of practical wisdom may have empirical foundations. From the literary perspective, by critically examining Nussbaum’s argument that literature matters for ethics and revisiting the cognitive evidence mentioned before, we argue that, for an adequate understanding of ethics, we need the literary form to grasp the ambiguities of a concrete situation, which is required by practical wisdom for a responsible moral judgment. Overall, we advocate the idea of cognitive poetics, which is not, as its opponents often claim, necessarily about how literary studies one-sidedly learn from cognitive science, but can be a two-way street where the two parties contribute to each other

    The Cult of the Market

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    The Cult of the Market: Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents disputes the practical value of the shallow, all-encompassing, dogmatic, economic fundamentalism espoused by policy elites in recent public policy debates, along with their gross simplifications and sacred rules. Economics cannot provide a convincing overarching theory of government action or of social action more generally. Furthermore, mainstream economics fails to get to grips with the economic system as it actually operates. It advocates a more overtly experimental, eclectic and pragmatic approach to policy development which takes more seriously the complex, interdependent, evolving nature of society and the economy. Importantly, it is an outlook that recognises the pervasive influence of asymmetries of wealth, power and information on bargaining power and prospects throughout society. The book advocates a major reform of the teaching of economics

    Analyzing oppositions in the concept of visuality between aesthetics and visual culture in art and education using John R. Searle's realist account of consciousness

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    In art and education, theorists dispute the concept of visuality, or how meaning occurs from what we see. This study examines two opposed and acrimoniously entrenched theoretical perspectives adopted internationally: visual culture and aesthetics. In visual culture, visual experience, including perception is mediated by background cultural discourses. On this approach, subjectivity is explained as conventional, the role of the senses in making meaning is strongly diminished or rejected and from this, accounting for visuality precludes indeterminate and intuitive aspects. Differently, aesthetic perspectives approach visual meaning as obtaining through direct perceptual and felt aspects of aesthetic experience. Here, subjectivity remains discrete from language and the role of cultural discourse in making meaning diminishes or is excluded. Each description is important to the explanation of visuality in art and education, but problematic. To start, the study outlines the central explanatory commitments of both visual culture and aesthetics. The study identifies problems in each with their explanations of subjectivity or self. Both positions maintain from earlier explanations of cognition that separate theoretically and practically the senses, cognitive processes, and context. The study looks at approaches to mind and representation in accounts of visuality and provides some background from the cognitive sciences to understand the problem further. Contemporary explanation from science and philosophy is revising the separation. However, some approaches from science are reductive of mind and both aesthetics and visual culture theorists are understandably reluctant to adopt scientistic or behaviourist approaches for the explanation of visual arts practices. The aim of the study is to provide a non-reductive realist account of visuality in visual arts and education. To accomplish this aim, the study employs philosopher John R. Searle's explanation of consciousness because it explores subjectivity as qualitative, unified, and intrinsically social in experience. By doing this, the study addresses a gap in the theoretical understanding of the two dominant approaches to visuality. The key to relations between subjectivity and the world in reasoning is the capacity for mental representation. From this capacity and the rational agency of a self, practical reasoning is central to the creation, understanding, and appreciation of art and imagery. This account of consciousness, its aspects, and how it works includes description of the Background, as capacities enabling the uptake and structuring of sociocultural influence in mind. Crucially, the study shows how the capacity for reasoned action can be represented without dualism or reduction to the explanatory constraints of behavioural or physical sciences, an important commitment in the arts and education. In this explanation, the study identifies epistemic constraints on the representation of mental states, including unconscious states, in accounting for practices as reasoned activities. Centrally, the study looks at how, from the capacities of consciousness and the self's freedom of will, visuality is unified as qualitative, cognitive, and social. In exploring Searle's explanation of consciousness, some account of current work on cognition extends discussion of a reconciliation of visuality on these terms

    Participatory sense-making in psychotherapy

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    250 p.La presente tesis propone un enfoque enactivo de la psiquiatría y la psicoterapia que va más allá de una concepción puramente ¿mentalista¿ de la empatía y la alianza terapéutica hacia una perspectiva de segunda persona, destacando el papel constitutivo de la interacción corporal pre-reflectiva entre terapeutas y pacientes en el proceso terapéutico. La tesis se cimienta en la teoría de la intersubjetividad entendida como participatory sense-making, que describe la coordinación de actividades intencionales y no intencionales como vehículo de la emergencia de significados compartidos en las interacciones interpersonales. Se presentan tres trabajos aplicando el marco enactivo a la investigación en psicoterapia: (1) un comentario sobre estudios correlacionales de coordinación no verbal y resultado psicoterapéutico, donde se sugieren nuevas hipótesis de trabajo e interpretaciones de datos empíricos, (2) un análisis interpretativo-fenomenológico de los mecanismos intercorporales pre-reflectivos implicados en la transición de la terapia presencial al formato online, y (3) un análisis y clasificación fenomenológico-enactivo de las intervenciones corporales en los procesos terapéuticos. Estos trabajos demuestran que el marco enactivo promueve una forma particular de investigar psicoterapia

    Aristotelian liberalism: an inquiry into the foundations of a free and flourishing society

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    My dissertation builds on the recent work of Douglas Rasmussen, Douglas Den Uyl and Roderick Long in developing an Aristotelian liberalism. It is argued that a neo- Aristotelian form of liberalism has a sounder foundation than others and has the resources to answer traditional left-liberal, postmodern, communitarian and conservative challenges by avoiding certain Enlightenment pitfalls: the charges of atomism, an a-historical and a- contextual view of human nature, license, excessive normative neutrality, the impoverishment of ethics and the trivialization of rights. An Aristotelian theory of virtue ethics and natural rights is developed that allows for a robust conception of the good while fully protecting individual liberty and pluralism. It is further argued that there is an excessive focus on what the State can and should do for us; politics is reconceived as discourse and deliberation between equals in joint pursuit of eudaimonia (flourishing, well-being, happiness) and its focus is shifted to what we as members of society can and should do for ourselves and each other

    Transhumanism and Theological Ethics: An Investigation of Insights to be Gained from Past Developments in Chemical Therapeutics

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    Transhumanism is concerned with developing human life beyond its current form and limitations using biomedical technologies. The purpose of this project is to make a theological and ethical assessment of proposed transhumanist enhancement technologies, in the light of developments in chemical therapeutics that have already taken place, during the so-called “therapeutic revolution” years of the twentieth century (1950-1990). The key research question that will be addressed is: what can be learned from theological and ethical engagement with past therapeutic developments, and how does this learning inform an evaluation of proposed future transhumanist biomedical technologies within Christian theological ethics? In this project, a case study methodology is used to examine two areas of past therapeutic development, the contraceptive pill and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants. The historical context and theological implications of these therapeutic developments are explored, and they are assessed against standard criteria for transhumanist developments. The findings from the case studies are then applied to proposed future transhumanist technologies, to determine how past experiences of therapeutic developments might inform ethical evaluation of future proposals in transhumanist technologies, and how issues with previous therapeutic developments might be reconsidered in the light of this evaluation. The thesis will be structured as follows: a) introduction and development of the research question, discussion of the methodology used and the assumptions made, b) description of transhumanist objectives and technologies and a theological and ethical critique of these, in order to develop theologically-informed criteria of what constitutes a transhumanist technology, c) presentation of two case studies of previous therapeutic developments (the contraceptive pill and SSRI anti-depressants) and evaluation of these cases against the criteria for transhumanist technologies, d) discussion of these findings, and their implications for a revised ethical understanding of future transhumanist technologies

    Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics

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    The Neganthropocene

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    In the essays and lectures here titled Neganthropocene, Stiegler opens an entirely new front moving beyond the dead-end “banality” of the Anthropocene. Stiegler stakes out a battleplan to proceed beyond, indeed shrugging off, the fulfillment of nihilism that the era of climate chaos ushers in
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