In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aesthetic Potential of Global Issues CurriculumWilliam Gaudelli (bio) and Randall Hewitt (bio)IntroductionGlobal issues rarely suggest conversations about aesthetics, as they conjure thinking about massive problems such as global warming, famine, and war rather than beautiful thoughts such as grace, love, and compassion. Students may engage in study of global issues in any number of venues, perhaps through a world geography class, within world literature, or as part (...) of a course in Earth science. They would likely be exposed to readings, Web sites, and videos about the nature and extent of problems. Teachers might engage them in small and large group discussions of problems, and, ideally, there would be some consideration of what they might do as citizens. Such processes, their outcomes, and subsequent civic directions are generally not regarded as aesthetic acts, however. One is likely to consider the aesthetic value of a piece of art, a song or poem, movie or performance, but to speak of activities like teaching global issues being aesthetic seems discordant.Yet, this is not so within John Dewey's notion of aesthetics. He argues that aesthetics can exist outside of museums and beyond theaters, potentially in social discourse. Activities like public talk, while not as inherently pleasing as listening to music, have the potential to be experienced as aesthetic:Hence an experience of thinking has its own esthetic quality. It differs from those experiences that are acknowledged to be esthetic, but only [End Page 83] in its materials … [T]he experience itself has a satisfying emotional quality because it possesses integral integration and fulfillment reached through ordered and organized movement … In short, esthetic cannot be sharply marked off from intellectual experience since the latter must bear an esthetic stamp to be itself complete.1Dewey's contention that all types of activity, from repairing an automobile to discussing species extinction, can point toward transcendence has not achieved widespread recognition among philosophers, nor has its utility been demonstrated in curriculum.2 Aesthetics and art are still largely confined to the museum, hermetically sealed off from everyday experiences in a Schillerian "ideal kingdom."3 To suggest curriculum, schools, and pedagogy as potential landscapes for artwork far removed from the museum is to render oneself a heretic in many quarters of educational discourse.Yet, there is a despondency and desperation about schools, and thereby curriculum, that too often fail to teach for and about something more than narrow, capitalist-driven, techno-rationalist ends. Constructivist orientations in teaching, for example, have contributed to shifting the manner of teaching but have done relatively little to reframe the ends of learning. Metaphorically, constructivism is a spoon of sugar to help swallow the bitter pill that is learning for and as work. What is lacking in this conceptualization, according to Parker Palmer, Nel Noddings, and Aostre Johnson, is an aesthetic and spiritual rationale for learning that honors the sanctity of students beyond their academic capacities, values the processes of learning as much as its outcomes, and seeks a space for learning that is transcendent.4What we seek in this article with Dewey, then, is an antidote for the malaise that has befallen curriculum, one that is rooted in an aesthetic way of thinking instantiated in a most unlikely candidate: teaching about global issues. We begin by briefly outlining some of Dewey's thinking related to aesthetics, particularly as it germinated in his career and biography. We then turn to the work of contemporary scholars in education who have similarly found value in Dewey's notion of aesthetics. Finally, we draw an illustration from a recent study of student focus groups engaged in reading global media. This student conversation about the potential cataclysm of global warming demonstrates the surprising capacity of such bleak policy discussions to generate aesthetic moments. The significance of this work lies in its potential to contribute to a broadened curriculum discourse that aims toward living an aesthetically resonant life in classrooms and wider social environs while augmenting and enhancing the rationalistic focus of contemporary schools and, indeed, the study of global issues.Deweyan Aesthetics and BiographyWe begin by weaving Dewey's biography with his notion of aesthetics as an internal process of... (shrink)

The perceived importance of a global experience in higher education is hard to underestimate. University presidents are known to boast of their “percentage,” or the proportion of undergraduates who study abroad. At least part of the rationale is a cosmopolitan one: an essential part of being acknowledged as educated derives in part from an appreciation of different cultures and development of worldliness. The expectation is that a global experience will stand out as an enduring memorial of an encounter with others. (...) These experiences are edified in resumes and narrated with veneration, further illuminating their cultural importance as coming-of-age rituals, particularly among a striding upper middle class... (shrink)

The reconstruction of philosophy, of education, and of social ideals and methods thus go hand in hand.In society today, we are inundated with reports on climate change, nuclear accidents, sectarian violence, terrorism, school shootings, police brutality, shrill mainstream politics, dire poverty, civil wars, and migration crises. As we observe their proliferation and escalation, it can feel as if we lack not only solutions to these social ills, but, even more fundamentally, ways to communicate about and make sense of their conditions (...) and consequences. Unfortunately, our failure to parse these events will not make them go away. To the contrary, their full impact will be endured for generations to come. As with other... (shrink)

Global issues rarely suggest conversations about aesthetics, as they conjure thinking about massive problems such as global warming, famine, and war rather than beautiful thoughts such as grace, love, and compassion. Students may engage in study of global issues in any number of venues, perhaps through a world geography class, within world literature, or as part of a course in Earth science. They would likely be exposed to readings, Web sites, and videos about the nature and extent of problems. Teachers (...) might engage them in small and large group discussions of problems, and, ideally, there would be some consideration of what they might do as citizens. Such processes, their outcomes, and subsequent civic directions .. (shrink)

This study sought to identify content on the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit in the 12 most commonly used high school and college-leveleconomics textbooks. Our systematic review of these sources leads to two key findings: (1) Textbooks are similar in how they represent fiscal policy yet treatthe federal budget, deficit, and debt differently across the sample, and (2) Textbooks treat the federal budget, budget deficit, and national debt as theoretical, without an examination of values and systemic electoral and (...) budgetary politics. These findings lead us to argue that curriculum is needed that will permit a careful examination of how everyday citizens can gain knowledge, acknowledge values, and work towards a reasoned and realitybased view of what is at stake with regard to these issues in the 21st Century. (shrink)

مداخلة مترجمة عن الفرنسية للفيلسوف الفرنسي جيل دولوز.

Introduction As the title indicates, the chief focus of this book is epistemic justification. But just what is epistemic justification and what is its place ...

2015 Reprint of 1956 Printing. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Cybernetics is here defined as "the science of control and communication, in the animal and the machine"-in a word, as the art of steersmanship; and this book will interest all who are interested in cybernetics, communication theory and methods for regulation and control. W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972) was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of complex systems. His two books, (...) "Design for a Brain" and "An Introduction to Cybernetics," were landmark works. They introduced exact and logical thinking into the nascent discipline and were highly influential. Contents include: What is new -- Change -- The Determinate Machine -- The Machine with Input -- Stability -- The Black Box -- Quantity of Variety -- Transmission of Variety -- Incessant Transmission -- Regulation in Biological Systems -- Requisite Variety -- The Error-controlled Regulator -- Regulating the Very Large System -- Amplifying Regulation. (shrink)

Cognitive representation is the single most important explanatory notion in the sciences of the mind and has served as the cornerstone for the so-called 'cognitive revolution'. This book critically examines the ways in which philosophers and cognitive scientists appeal to representations in their theories, and argues that there is considerable confusion about the nature of representational states. This has led to an excessive over-application of the notion - especially in many of the fresher theories in computational neuroscience. Representation Reconsidered shows (...) how psychological research is actually moving in a non-representational direction, revealing a radical, though largely unnoticed, shift in our basic understanding of how the mind works. (shrink)

Liberal thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were alert to the political costs and human cruelties involved in European colonialism, but they also thought that European expansion held out progressive possibilities. In Progress, Pluralism, and Politics David Williams examines the colonial and anti-colonial arguments of Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and L.T. Hobhouse. Williams locates their ambivalent attitude towards European conquest and colonial rule in a set of tensions between the impact of colonialism on European states, the possibilities (...) of progress in distant and diverse places, and the relationship between universalism and cultural pluralism. In so doing he reveals some of the central ambiguities that characterize the ways that liberal thought has dealt with the reality of an illiberal world. Of particular importance are appeals to various forms of universal history, attempts to mediate between the claims of identity and the reality of difference, and the different ways of thinking about the achievement of liberal goods in other places. Pointing to key elements in still ongoing debates within liberal states about how they should relate to illiberal places, Progress, Pluralism, and Politics enriches the discussion on political thought and the relationship between liberalism and colonialism. (shrink)

The rise of progressive education -- John Dewey -- Other pioneers in the progressive education movement -- The progressive education movement during the first half of the twentieth century -- The fifties -- The sixties and seventies -- A nation at risk (1983) -- The eighties and nineties -- No child left behind -- Maria Montessori -- Teacher education programs -- Middle schools -- Choice -- Education of the gifted and talented -- Progressive education today -- The future of progressive (...) education. (shrink)

In fourteen scholarly yet delightfully readable essays, Ober solves some ancient mysteries and reveals the secret kinks and passions of famous and obscure historical figures.

" In a book that seeks to shift the ground of debate within theory of knowledge, William P. Alston finds that the century-lo.

This paper distinguishes and interrelates a number of respects in which persons have been thought to be in a specially favorable epistemic position vis-A-Vis their own mental states. The most important distinction is a six-Fold one between infallibility, Omniscience, Indubitability, Incorrigibility, Truth-Sufficiency, And self-Warrant. Each of these varieties can then be sub-Divided as the kind of modality, If any, Involved. It is also argued that discussions of self-Knowledge have been hampered by a failure to recognize these distinctions.

William Uttal is concerned that in an effort to prove itself a hard science, psychology may have thrown away one of its most important methodological tools—a critical analysis of the fundamental assumptions that underlie day-to-day empirical research. In this book Uttal addresses the question of localization: whether psychological processes can be defined and isolated in a way that permits them to be associated with particular brain regions. New, noninvasive imaging technologies allow us to observe the brain while it is (...) actively engaged in mental activities. Uttal cautions, however, that the excitement of these new research tools can lead to a neuroreductionist wild goose chase. With more and more cognitive neuroscientific data forthcoming, it becomes critical to question their limitations as well as their potential. Uttal reviews the history of localization theory, presents the difficulties of defining cognitive processes, and examines the conceptual and technical difficulties that should make us cautious about falling victim to what may be a "neo-phrenological" fad. (shrink)

William P. Alston formulates and defends a realist conception of truth, which he calls alethic realism (from "aletheia", Greek for "truth").

In various contexts and for various reasons, writers often define cognitive processes and architectures as those involving representational states and structures. Similarly, cognitive theories are also often delineated as those that invoke representations. In this paper, I present several reasons for rejecting this way of demarcating the cognitive. Some of the reasons against defining cognition in representational terms are that doing so needlessly restricts our theorizing, it undermines the empirical status of the representational theory of mind, and it encourages wildly (...) deflationary and explanatorily vacuous conceptions of representation. After criticizing this outlook, I sketch alternative ways we might try to capture what is distinctive about cognition and cognitive theorizing. (shrink)

The philosophy of cognitive science has recently become one of the most exciting and fastest growing domains of philosophical inquiry and analysis. Until the early 1980s, nearly all of the models developed treated cognitive processes -- like problem solving, language comprehension, memory, and higher visual processing -- as rule-governed symbol manipulation. However, this situation has changed dramatically over the last half dozen years. In that period there has been an enormous shift of attention toward connectionist models of cognition that are (...) inspired by the network-like architecture of the brain. Because of their unique architecture and style of processing, connectionist systems are generally regarded as radically different from the more traditional symbol manipulation models. This collection was designed to provide philosophers who have been working in the area of cognitive science with a forum for expressing their views on these recent developments. Because the symbol-manipulating paradigm has been so important to the work of contemporary philosophers, many have watched the emergence of connectionism with considerable interest. The contributors take very different stands toward connectionism, but all agree that the potential exists for a radical shift in the way many philosophers think of various aspects of cognition. Exploring this potential and other philosophical dimensions of connectionist research is the aim of this volume. (shrink)

In this clear and provocative account of the epistemology of religious experience, William P. Alston argues that the perception of God—his term for direct experiential awareness of God—makes a major contribution to the grounds of religious belief. Surveying the variety of reported direct experiences of God, Alston demonstrates that a person can be justified in holding certain beliefs about God on the basis of mystical experience.

This collection is a festschrift prepared for Williams on his retirement from the White’s Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. The topics covered include equality, consistency, comparison between science and ethics, integrity, moral reasons, the moral system, and moral knowledge. Most of the chapters combine exegetical and critical ambitions. With contributions by J. E. J. Altham, Jon Elster, Nicholas Jardine, Ross Harrison, Christopher Hookway, John McDowell, Martin Hollis, Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, and Charles Taylor, and replies by Bernard Williams.

This essay re-examines Meinong's "Über Gegenstandstheorie" and undertakes a clarification and revision of it that is faithful to Meinong, overcomes the various objections to his theory, and is capable of offering solutions to various problems in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. I then turn to a discussion of a historically and technically interesting Russell-style paradox (now known as "Clark's Paradox") that arises in the modified theory. I also examine the alternative Meinong-inspired theories of Hector-Neri Castañeda and Terence Parsons.

Recent business headlines, particularly those related to the collapsed energy-trading giant, Enron and its auditor, Arthur Andersen raise concerns about accountants' ethical reasoning. We propose, and provide evidence from 90 new auditors from Big-Five accounting firms, that a selection-socialization effect exists in the accounting profession that results in hiring accountants with disproportionately higher levels of the Sensing/thinking (ST) cognitive style. This finding is important and relevant because we also find that the ST cognitive style is associated with relatively low levels (...) of ethical reasoning, regardless of gender. This finding implies a need for emphasis on the ethical training of accountants. The results also suggest that accounting firms should consider recruiting accountants with cognitive styles associated with relatively higher levels of ethical reasoning. (shrink)

The pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially his ability to create living discourses that directly address the student, is the subject of Plato the Teacher. “The crisis of the Republic” refers to the decisive moment in his central dialogue when philosopher-readers realize that Plato’s is challenging them to choose justice by going back down into the dangerous Cave of political life for the sake of the greater Good, as both Socrates and Cicero did.

William P. Alston. difference in the scope of the rule reflects the fact that I-rules exist for the sake of making communication possible. Whereas their cousins are enacted and enforced for other reasons. We could distinguish I-rules just by this ...

What is it for a sentence to have a certain meaning? This is the question that the distinguished analytic philosopher William P. Alston addresses in this major contribution to the philosophy of language. His answer focuses on the given sentence's potential to play the role that its speaker had in mind, what he terms the usability of the sentence to perform the illocutionary act intended by its speaker. Alston defines an illocutionary act as an act of saying something with (...) a certain "content." He develops his account of what it is to perform such acts in terms of taking responsibility, in uttering a sentence, for the existence of certain conditions. In requesting someone to open a window, for example, the speaker takes responsibility for its being the case that the window is closed and that the speaker has an interest in its being opened. In Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning, Alston expands upon this concept, creating a framework of five categories of illocutionary act and going on to argue that sentence meaning is fundamentally a matter of illocutionary act potential; that is, for a sentence to have a particular meaning is for it to be usable to perform illocutionary acts of a certain type. In providing detailed and explicit patterns of analysis for the whole range of illocutionary acts, Alston makes a unique contribution to the field of philosophy of language—one that is likely to generate debate for years to come. (shrink)

Beliefs are freely attributed to God nowadays in Anglo–American philosophical theology. This practice undoubtedly reflects the twentieth–century popularity of the view that knowledge consists of true justified belief . The connection is frequently made explicit. If knowledge is true justified belief then whatever God knows He believes. It would seem that much recent talk of divine beliefs stems from Nelson Pike's widely discussed article, ‘Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action’. In this essay Pike develops a version of the classic argument for (...) the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will in terms of divine forebelief. He introduces this shift by premising that ‘ A knows X ’ entails ‘A believes X ’. As a result of all this, philosophers have increasingly been using the concept of belief in defining ‘omniscience’. (shrink)

This essay considers what it means to understand natural language and whether a computer running an artificial-intelligence program designed to understand natural language does in fact do so. It is argued that a certain kind of semantics is needed to understand natural language, that this kind of semantics is mere symbol manipulation (i.e., syntax), and that, hence, it is available to AI systems. Recent arguments by Searle and Dretske to the effect that computers cannot understand natural language are discussed, and (...) a prototype natural-language-understanding system is presented as an illustration. (shrink)