This article examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon, “Epistemic Landscapes and the Division of Cognitive Labor”, that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the division of cognitive labor, identifying the errors that led (...) to their conclusions. Furthermore, we generalize the epistemic landscape model, showing that one should be skeptical about the benefits of social learning in epistemically complex environments. (shrink)

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

A standard view of trust sees trust as intimately related to reliance; on this standard view, trust is reliance plus some other factor. A significant literature has now developed that seeks to explain what factor, in addition to reliance, serves to distinguish cases of trust from cases of mere reliance. I argue that this approach to the analysis of trust is misguided. Although reliance, properly understood, frequently accompanies trust, reliance is not a necessary condition of trust.

In the light of the modern idea of a sovereign and self-transparent subject, the paper evaluates the philosophical and ethical relevance of Bildung. As a first step, (the early) Nietzsche's and Adorno's criticism of Bildung is explicated, a criticism based upon the thinkers' critical stance towards the modern epistemological relation of subject and object. However, neither thinker abandons the concept of Bildung. The second part of the paper accordingly reconstructs Nietzsche's and Adorno's adherence to Bildung understood as a different relationship (...) of subject and object within Bildung. In the paper's concluding reflections there is an attempt to assess the systematic educational consequences, and to shed light on the ethical relevance, of a non-transparent subject of Bildung. (shrink)

This article critically assesses the moral arguments that speak in favour of three consumer options: buying local food, buying global (non‐local) food, and buying global food while also purchasing carbon offsets to mitigate the environmental impact of food transportation. We argue that because the offsetting option allows one to provide economic benefits to the poorest food workers while also mitigating the environmental impact of food transportation it is morally superior to the alternatives.

Rev. version of the author's Habilitationsschrift, Martin-Luther-Universitèat.

Christian List and Philip Pettit have recently developed a model of group agency on which an autonomous group agent can be formed, by deductive inference, from the beliefs and preferences of the individual group members. In this paper I raise doubts as to whether this type of group agent is a moral agent. The sentimentalist approach to moral responsibility sees a constitutive role for moral emotions, such as blame, guilt, and indignation, in our practices of attributing moral responsibility. These moral (...) emotions are important for the alignment of moral understandings, and for valuing other members of the moral community. I argue that while the intentional objects of beliefs and preferences are propositions, the intentional objects of moral emotions are other agents. Because agents are not subject to rules of inference, we cannot generate group agent emotions—such as guilt—in the same way as we can generate group agent beliefs and preferences. And because the group agents lack moral emotions, we have reason to resist treating them as moral agents. (shrink)

Geoffrey Rose's ‘prevention paradox’ occurs when a population-based preventative health measure that brings large benefits to the community – such as compulsory seatbelts, a ‘fat tax’, or mass immunisation – offers little to each participating individual. Although the prevention paradox is not obviously a paradox in the sense in which philosophers understand the term, it does raise important normative questions. In particular, should we implement population-based preventative health measures when the typical individual is not expected to gain from them? After (...) canvassing other attempts to address the paradox, I argue that what is significant about the prevention paradox is that it involves intra-personal trade-offs; the costs and benefits of the choice to implement or not implement a preventative health measure fall on the same individuals. The intra-personal nature of these trade-offs has two implications. First, the solutions to the paradox proposed by other authors are deficient. Second, the policy choice to not implement some preventative health measures can be normatively justified. (shrink)

What does reflection on educational theory and education today actually aim at, if theory and practice can no longer be formulated as a unity? This article describes the German discourse of educational philosophy and outlines its critical view discussing the “limits of understanding subjectivity”. In the following parts it is argued that the philosophy of education of the future will encompass an “economy” as well as an “ecology” of pedagogical or educational knowledge. Here, analyses of contemporary educational practices are brought (...) together with the invention and discovery of other or alternative possibilities. (shrink)

In this essay, Christiane Thompson addresses the question of evaluative practices, particularly student evaluation of teaching (SET), and their effects with respect to pedagogical relations in the university setting. In the first part of the essay, Thompson draws on Michel Foucault's analysis of power to show how university teaching has come to be defined according to notions of obligation, accountability, and assurance. The forgetfulness of pedagogical relations that results from the increasing use of SET prompts Thompson to rethink the significance (...) of pedagogical relations in the second part of the essay. Referring to the notion of “educational authority” and Foucault's framework of power, Thompson argues that education is about the continuous re-institution of pedagogical relation to the other. In the final section, Thompson reflects upon the professor's “authority” in terms of constituting a “community of inquiry”: specifically, the seminar is interpreted as a pedagogical setting that implies a different “being-with” than SET suggests. She concludes by considering what possibilities and limitations the seminar setting offers and how we can discuss this issue (by means of evaluative practice). (shrink)

Multiple-vote majority rule is a procedure for making group decisions in which individuals weight their votes on issues in accordance with how competent they are on them. When individuals are motivated by the truth and know their relative competence on different issues, multiple-vote majority rule performs nearly as well, epistemically speaking, as rule by an expert oligarchy, but is still acceptable from the point of view of equal participation in the political process.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your (...) Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.A CASE FOR MULTIPLE-VOTE MAJORITY RULEVolume 9, Issue 1Richard Bradley and Christopher ThompsonDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.5Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. A CASE FOR MULTIPLE-VOTE MAJORITY RULEVolume 9, Issue 1Richard Bradley and Christopher ThompsonDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.5Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. A CASE FOR MULTIPLE-VOTE MAJORITY RULEVolume 9, Issue 1Richard Bradley and Christopher ThompsonDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.5Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the transformation of the field of early education in Germany. It poses the question whether these changes can be generally related to the German concept of Bildung – as denoting the children's autonomous activity of engaging themselves and the world. Investigating film material on practices of documentation in early education the paper seeks to clarify the impacts that Bildung has for the constitution of children's subjectivity. Does Bildung bring about a regime of individualization that obfuscates (...) modes of sociality and being with? Are there alternative ways to interpret the modes of subjection in observation? (shrink)

A meta-analytic review of studies that experimentally elicited awe and compared the emotion to other conditions (84; 487 effects; 17,801 participants) examined the degree to which experimentally elicited awe (1) affects outcomes relative to other positive emotions (2) affects experience, judgment, behaviour, and physiology, and (3) differs in its effects if the awe state was elicited through positive or threatening contexts. The efficacy of methods that have been used to experimentally elicit awe and the possibility of assessing changes in the (...) state of the self with experimental awe elicitations were also examined. Meta-analyses with robust variance estimation revealed that awe affected outcomes compared to other positive emotions and control conditions; affected experience, judgment, and behaviour; and had similar effects if elicited through positive or threatening contexts. The ability to compare awe to negative emotion states and its effects on physiology was limited by a small number of available effects. Images, videos, autobiographical recall, and naturalistic exposure were effective in eliciting awe. Exploratory analyses suggested that some processes involved in changes in the self can be related to experimental awe elicitations. These findings suggest awe is a discrete emotion and identifies areas for future investigation. (shrink)

I aim to show that the failure of the California Class Size Reduction initiative highlights an important class of situations in the application of evidence to policy. There are some circumstances in which the implementation of a policy will be self-defeating. The introduction of the factor assumed to have causal efficacy into the target population can lead to changes in the conditions of the target population that amount to interfering factors. Because these interfering factors are a direct result of the (...) policy implementation they should be relatively easy to predict, and so part of the tricky issue of judging where evidence is relevant should in some circumstances be relatively straightforward. -/- The failure of the California Class Size Reduction initiative also shows how important it is to identify the correct causal factor. The more accurate the attribution of causality, the less susceptible it will be to interfering factors and breaks in the causal chain. (shrink)

The standard epistemic justification for inclusiveness in political decision making is the Condorcet Jury Theorem, which states that the probability of a correct decision using majority rule increases in group size (given certain assumptions). Informally, majority rule acts as a mechanism to pool the information contained in the judgements of individual agents. I aim to extend the explanation of how groups of political agents track the truth. Before agents can pool the information, they first need to find truth-conducive information. Increasing (...) group size is also important in the initial search for truth-conducive information. (shrink)

While current literature on examination and testing mostly engages with the objectivity of exams and their procedural logic, this article is concerned with the ‘ethical dimension’ of examination: Examinations provoke a particular relation to oneself, possibly self-transformation. The praxis of examination entails self-confrontation in the light of the uncertainty regarding that which is expected of the self. Referring to an example taken from the field of early education, four ‘figures' – positional difference, exposition, identification, and representation – are used in (...) a heuristic manner to elaborate on the ethical dimension in examination. The aim of the paper is to view ‘examination’ from a theoretical point of view focusing on practices, on the one hand, and to analyze the ethical norms and expectations that the self is addressed with in the field of early education, on the other. (shrink)

The warrant for investigating the relationship between Augustine and narrative ethics is prompted, among other things, by a consideration of the appeals to Augustine among a diversity of views within the vast field of narrative ethics. Disparate thinkers from distinctively different backgrounds and with different motives and purposes, while all sharing an interest in the category of "narrative," also share a common interest in employing Augustine's Confessions in their efforts. Thus the question emerges as to what it is about this (...) ancient text which so readily serves such diverse yet unified purposes. ;After a thorough investigation and evaluation of the appeals to Augustine among a sampling of contemporary narrativists I turn to the Confessions directly. I argue that an examination of the anti-Manichaean aspects of its composition yield important insights regarding its usefulness in the efforts of contemporary narrativists. Specifically, I argue that implicit in this work is a theology of creation which supplies essential foundations to the contemporary discussion of narrative ethics. (shrink)

In the past years, there has been an intensive discussion on the topic of academic freedom in the university. More precisely, it has been criticized that the university is confronted with a growing intolerance and the request to limit free speech. This contribution takes a case at a German university as point of departure. It shows how the current discussions draw on central figures of the philosophy of Enlightenment. In the first part of the paper, the ideas of free speech (...) following Kant, Mill, and Popper are presented. The second part of the article shows how these positions can also lead to an inversion or instrumentalization of Enlightenment thought. This is illustrated using exemplary statements from the case presented in the beginning of the article. In the third part of the article, the concept of higher education or Bildung will be discussed in relation to academic freedom. The guiding principle is an openness toward a pluralistic discourse that is to be framed by societal analysis, civility, and critique. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the educational‐philosophical implications of Michel Foucault's work: It poses the question whether Michel Foucault's remarks surrounding ‘limit‐experience’ can be placed in an educational context and provide an alternative view regarding the relationship that we maintain to ourselves. As a first step, the significance of ‘limit‐experience’ for Foucault's historicophilosophical investigations, his ‘critical ontology of the present’, is examined. Far from being an external marking point, it can be shown that limit‐experience lies at the centre of Foucault's (...) approaches to the history of thought. As a second step, the resistance of Foucault's work against its integration into the educational realm is examined: Coming from Foucault's ‘limit‐experience’, it is possible to problematize a specific way we speak about learning and education. As a subsequent step, this resistance is given a constructive turn: The practices of writing and reading (related to limit‐experience) could provide a valuable irritation for philosophers of education by exposing them to the challenges of ‘singularity’ in education. It is argued that specifically the writing practice could be helpful for educational studies in order to inquire into the complex relationship of subject, power, and truth within the educational realm. Finally, the possibilities and difficulties of provoking such a writing practice are mentioned. (shrink)

What is the task of educational theory or philosophy if it is not merely conceived as specification of philosophical doctrines in the realm of education? In my view it is the particular task of educational-philosophical theory to work critically on the historically developed cultural constructs that shape our (educational) experience. Thus, the activity that educational theorists are to perform is the critical reflection of the “limits of our world” by drawing on philosophical references and theories. In this text I describe (...) this activity drawing from my own research practice with a particular focus on its relation to what is called thinking. (shrink)

This article address the ways in which contemporary psychologists might usefully engage in a dialogue with Catholic philosophers and theologians influenced by the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. The specific point of common agreement and vision between these diverse approaches lies in the general notion that human action is directed toward an end which the individual judges to be good in some sense. Despite the considerable differences in foundational issues, boththe clinical psychologist and Thomist are perhaps able to come to (...) a constructive, common vision around the notion that all human action is directed toward the achievement of some good. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the question of how a philosophically enriched view of method might inform both educational theory and educational research. The first part of the paper elaborates recent discussions on “philosophical method” in the educational–philosophical discourse. These discussions point toward the importance of analyzing the conceptual or categorical frameworks of educational processes. The second part of the paper discusses Martin Heidegger’s work Being and Time to capture fully the challenges that a philosophical method faces in investigations of (...) subjectivity: The focus lies on Heidegger’s strategy to situate his philosophical work as a descriptive undertaking and simultaneously as a categorical outline of human existentiality (“ Dasein ”). This work serves to reflect a philosophical as well as empirical attitude or conduct in the final part of the paper, which briefly introduces “categorical research” with some examples. (shrink)

Since Dilthey we have become used to thinking of reason as having a cultural and historical setting. If we take this insight seriously, then critical rationality or critical thinking can no longer be conceived of as context-free skills. This paper takes up the line of thought that is elaborated by Christopher Winch in his ‘Developing Critical Rationality as a Pedagogical Aim’ and seeks to explicate it by drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of ‘language games’ and on the re-evaluation of ‘thinking’ (...) by Theodor Ballauff (a German philosopher of education who was influenced by Martin Heidegger). The overcoming of a solipsistic and idealistic conception of thinking raises questions regarding the pedagogical settings and aims, as well as the problems over the limits of critique in education. A comparison of Ballauff's and Winch's positions reinforces the sense of the significance of critique: although the role of critical rationality within education is ambiguous and precarious, the investigation of autonomy (as an educational goal) shows that critique cannot be limited in any straightforward way. (shrink)