Reflective Knowledge: Confucius and Virtue Epistemology

Most of sScholars have typically regarded Confucius as an ethical thinker broadly construed and not as an epistemological thinker. This paper seeks to overturn that view and, in doing so, has three basic goals. The first goal is to make the case that Confucian thought of the Analects is of epistemological significance. Goal two is to locate the significance of the Confucian thought within epistemology while accounting for the past overlooking of this significance. The third goal is to show that the Confucian thought is not only of epistemological significance, but that it can make a contribution to progressing contemporary epistemology

The Problem of First-Person Aboutness

The topic of this paper is the question of in virtue of what first-person thoughts are about what they are about. I focus on a dilemma arising from this question. On the one hand, approaches to answering this question that promise to be satisfying seem doomed to be inconsistent with the seeming truism that first-person thought is always about the thinker of the thought. But on the other hand, ensuring consistency with that truism seems doomed to make any answer to the question unsatisfying. Contrary to a careful and enticing recent effort to both sharpen and escape this dilemma by Daniel Morgan, I will argue that the dilemma remains pressing both for broadly epistemic and broadly causal-acquaintance-based accounts of the aboutness of first-person thought

Analysis of Students' Critical Thinking Skill of Middle School Through STEM Education Project-Based Learning

This research is to investigate the students` critical thinking skill by using STEM education through Project Based Learning. The study applied descriptive research design. In these lessons, the participants were 160 first grade Japanese middle school students from four classes. They were divided into nine groups each class. The instruments are worksheets to explore students' initial knowledge about how to clean up wastewater and critical thinking processes. The worksheet consists of the designing solution, and understanding of concepts to identify critical thinking based on purpose and question, selection of information, assumption, and point of view the solution, and implication. Students were asked to design tools to clean up the wastewater. Students were given more than one chance to design the best product for wastewater treatment. The lessons consist of six lessons. The first lesson is the introduction of colloid, solution, and suspension, and discussion about wastewater. The second lesson to the fourth lesson was finding solutions and designing products. The fifth lesson was to watch a video of wastewater treatments in Japan and to optimize the solutions or products. The last lesson was to make a conclusion, to exchange presentations, and to develop discussion. Implementation of STEM education can be seen from the students` solutions, some students used biology or chemistry or physics or combination concept and Mathematics to design solution (technology) for treatment of wastewater. The result showed that the mean score of students` critical thinking skill was 2.82. The students` critical thinking skill was categorized as advanced thinker: 41.6%, practicing thinker: 30,6%, beginning thinker: 25%, and challenged thinker: 2.8%. And the category for students` critical thinking was practicing thinker. Practicing thinker is a stage of critical thinking development, they have enough skill in thinking to critique their own plan for systematic practice, and to construct a realistic critique of their powers of thought to solve the contextual problem

Early Soviet research projects and the developments of "Bakhtinian" ideas: the view from the archives

[FIRST PARAGRAPH] When the history of Bakhtin studies is finally written, one particularly ironic aspect that will stand out is that an accurate understanding of the development of dialogic ideas has required us to liberate ourselves from a series of monologic myths. Such thinking, to paraphrase Bakhtin himself, 'impoverished' our understanding, 'disorganised and bled' an accurate image of the dynamics of intellectual formation, by 'mixing it up' with 'fantastic' and 'estranged' notions and 'rounding it out' into a 'mythological whole' (Bakhtin 1979 [l 936-81: 224; 1986 [l 936-81: 43) Four particularly persistent varieties may be briefly summarised as follows: 1) Bakhtin was a thoroughly original thinker who thought up all his ideas crA mhilo, 2) Bakhtin surrounded himself with mediocrities and there was a unidirectional flow of ideas from him to, say, Voloshinov and Medvedev, 3) Bakhtin was an 'unofficial' thinker who chose to remain outside the dominant trends within Soviet scholarship and was fundamentally unaffected by that scholarship, 4) where Bakhtin was compelled to engage with Soviet scholarship the result was either rebuttal or inner subversion rather than serious engagement. I will refrain from identifying specific works in which these myths are present since they permeated the majority of research in the field until relatively recently and they have receded only gradually. Furthermore, the myths have not uniformly disintegrated, but have retreated unevenly in the face of a varying amount and quality of research in specific areas

Standing in a Garden of Forking Paths

According to the Path Principle, it is permissible to expand your set of beliefs iff (and because) the evidence you possess provides adequate support for such beliefs. If there is no path from here to there, you cannot add a belief to your belief set. If some thinker with the same type of evidential support has a path that they can take, so do you. The paths exist because of the evidence you possess and the support it provides. Evidential support grounds propositional justification. The principle is mistaken. There are permissible steps you may take that others may not even if you have the very same evidence. There are permissible steps that you cannot take that others can even if your beliefs receive the same type of evidential support. Because we have to assume almost nothing about the nature of evidential support to establish these results, we should reject evidentialism

“The discontinuity in the continuity”. Michel Foucault and the archaeological period

Undoubtedly, the topic of discontinuity has got to an extent where it has captured the attention of a good number of researchers. These researchers devote themselves to reflect on the philosophy of the French thinker. Focusing on discontinuity promises to open a new line of analysis that, perhaps, will allow the revaluation of its scope in relation to its philosophical contributions. For such a task, first, we will approach the notion of history in Foucauldian thought to study the development this notion has with the discontinuity; followed by a study of the archaeological method to unravel whether it is possible to analyze discontinuity through an archaeological view. Would it be possible to look at the topic of discontinuity as a characteristic feature of this French philosopher's thinking? This document aims to answer this question

“Critical Thinking: An Approach that Synthesizes Analytic Philosophy”

This paper concentrates on the resurrection of the journey of analytic philosophy from the perspective of ‘critical thinking,’ a tool of proper thought and understanding. To define an era of philosophy as analytic seems indeed a difficult attempt. However, my attempt would be to look up a few positions from the monumental thoughts of Frege, Russell, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Quine, and Putnam on their ‘analysis’ minded outlooks that developed in different ways based on logic, scientific spirit, conceptual, language etc. Analytic philosophers intend to intertwine between word and world in terms of mind and language guided by critical analysis that I think remarkably encompassed by clarity, truth, analysis, accuracy, and open-mindedness. My attempt would be to resurrect the philosophical development of analytic philosophy in different periods that were enormously nourished by the idea of ‘critical thinking’ and the analysis of natural language

William Godwin and the puritan legacy

This essay’s analysis of Godwin’s engagement with his (and Britain’s) puritan and Dissenting legacy is significant in two respects. First, it offers a reading of two of Godwin’s lesser known, later writings and thus contributes to our appreciation of a thinker whose activity and influence in the nineteenth century is still poorly understood. Second, this topic offers a unique point of entry into the bewildering complex of religious, political and historiographical tensions comprising the intersection of Britain’s long eighteenth and long nineteenth centuries. This pivotal period saw the emergence of a radically reformed British polity, an important element of which addressed long-standing issues of religious profession and allegiance. In this context, it is surely helpful to engage the extensive historical reflections of one of English letters’ most productive and generically versatile practitioners

Selective scepticism over thought: am I ever justified in doubting that I think that thought but not this one?

In this paper, I subject a number of statements avowing selective doubt about an act of thinking to philosophical analysis (e.g., "A thought occurred just now but I do not believe that I was thinking it") to ascertain those circumstances under which they constitute a legitimate expression of scepticism. C an a case be made for epistemic discrepancy sufficient to justify the following claim : "I doubt that I think that thought but not this one"? In support of selective scepticism, I discuss the ontological and epistemic properties evident in an indirect form of Moore’s paradox which features beliefs about a thought and a thinker: notably, "I experienced a thought just now but I do not believe that I was thinking it". I argue that the conjunction above contains conjuncts which are ontologically equivalent but epistemically distinct. This difference explains not only why the statement is indirectly Moore paradoxical but how selective scepticism over thought might be justified. To further support my claim for the legitimacy of selective scepticism, I consider research on how a child acquire s beliefs about thinking , and speculate over the cause of a rare pathological condition known as thought insertion