Macphail’s ‘null hypothesis’, that there are no differences in intelligence, qualitative or quantitative, between non-human vertebrates has been controversial. This controversy can be useful if it encourages interest in acquiring a detailed understanding of how non-human animals express flexible problem-solving capacity (‘intelligence’), but limiting the discussion to vertebrates is too arbitrary. As an example, we focus here on Portia, a spider with an especially intricate predatory strategy and a preference for other spiders as prey. We review research on pre-planned detours, (...) expectancy violation and a capacity to solve confinement problems where, in each of these three contexts, there is experimental evidence of innate cognitive capacities and reliance on internal representation. These cognitive capacities are related to, but not identical to, intelligence. When discussing intelligence, as when discussing cognition, it is more useful to envisage a continuum instead of something that is simply present or not; in other words, a continuum pertaining to flexible problem-solving capacity for ‘intelligence’ and a continuum pertaining to reliance on internal representation for ‘cognition’. When envisaging a continuum pertaining to intelligence, Daniel Dennett’s notion of four Creatures (Darwinian, Skinnerian, Popperian, Gregorian) is of interest, with the distinction between Skinnerian and Popperian Creatures being especially relevant when considering Portia. When we consider these distinctions, a case can be made for Portia being a Popperian Creature. Like Skinnerian Creatures, Popperian Creatures express flexible problem solving capacity, but the manner in which this capacity is expressed by Popperian Creatures is more distinctively cognitive. (shrink)

Bu makale, yazarın 'Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach' adlı eserinde de olduğu gibi öncelikle temsil, yorumlama ve düşünümsellik anahtar kavramlarını tartışarak yorumlayıcı din eğitimi yaklaşımını tanıtma amacını gütmektedir. Makale, bu fikirlerin deneysel bir program geliştirme projesi olan Warwich Din Eğitimi Projesine nasıl uygulandığını göstererek devam etmektedir. Nihayet Warwich Din Eğitimi Projesinin tamamlayıcısı olarak görülen yorumlayıcı yaklaşımın dört değişkeninin üzerinde durulmaktadır. İkisi İngiltere'deki Warwich Din ve Eğitim Araştırmaları Biriminde yapılan çalışmayla bağlantılıdır. Diğerleri ise Güney Afrika ve İsveç'teki din eğitimcilerinden alınmıştır.

What is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and ‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that (...) ‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experience. (shrink)

Buddhisms and Deconstructions considers the connection between Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction, focusing on the work of Robert Magliola. Fourteen distinguished contributors discuss deconstruction and various Buddhisms—Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese —followed by an afterword in which Magliola responds directly to his critics.

Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has its (...) advocates, most theorists have sought a middle way that accommodates both the common-sense view of mind and the metaphysical conviction about the physical world. This volume presents a collection of new, specially written essays by a diverse group of philosophers, each of whom is widely known for defending a particular conception of minds and their place in nature. Contributors include Robert Audi, Lynne Rudder Baker, Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ruth Garrett Millikan, H. W. Noonan, Philip Pettit, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Van Gulick. (shrink)

In this significant contribution to Hegel scholarship, Robert Williams develops the most comprehensive account to date of Hegel's concept of recognition. Fichte introduced the concept of recognition as a presupposition of both Rousseau's social contract and Kant's ethics. Williams shows that Hegel appropriated the concept of recognition as the general pattern of his concept of ethical life, breaking with natural law theory yet incorporating the Aristotelian view that rights and virtues are possible only within a certain kind of community. (...) He explores Hegel's intersubjective concept of spirit as the product of affirmative mutual recognition and his conception of recognition as the right to have rights. Examining Hegel's Jena manuscripts, his _Philosophy of Right_, the _Phenomenology of Spirit_, and other works, Williams shows how the concept of recognition shapes and illumines Hegel's understandings of crime and punishment, morality, the family, the state, sovereignty, international relations, and war. A concluding chapter on the reception and reworking of the concept of recognition by contemporary thinkers including Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze demonstrates Hegel's continuing centrality to the philosophical concerns of our age. (shrink)

Since the publication of Edmund Gettier's challenge to the traditional epistemological doctrine of knowledge as justified true belief, Roberts and Wood claim that epistemologists lapsed into despondency and are currently open to novel approaches. One such approach is virtue epistemology, which can be divided into virtues as proper functions or epistemic character traits. The authors propose a notion of regulative epistemology, as opposed to a strict analytic epistemology, based on intellectual virtues that function not as rules or even as skills (...) but as habits of the heart. To that end, they divide the task of clarifying and expounding their notion in the book's two parts.In the first part, Roberts and Wood examine various components that constitute their notion of regulative epistemology. The first are the epistemic goods or goals that drive the epistemic process. What is needed, claim Roberts and Wood, is an enriched notion of these goods rather than the restricted notion of justified true belief. Epistemic agents are more than calculating devices in that …. (shrink)

Robert R. Williams offers a bold new account of divergences and convergences in the work of Hegel and Nietzsche. He explores four themes - the philosophy of tragedy; recognition and community; critique of Kant; and the death of God - and explicates both thinkers' critiques of traditional theology and metaphysics.

Multicultural education was attacked by antiracists in Britain in the 1980s. Although it is arguable that not all of the criticisms were valid, the debate raises questions about the efficacy of religious education in countering racism. The paper argues that a lack of analysis of the concepts 'religions' and 'cultures' in British RE has led to a representation of religious traditions which essentialises them, playing down their internal diversity, and which assumes a 'closed' view of cultures. A more flexible approach (...) is suggested, drawing on work in ethnography and other social science disciplines, which might better combine with antiracist stances than earlier approaches. The work of the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit is introduced briefly as an example of an attempt to address some of the above issues in terms of an integrated approach to theory, the study of religions in the community and the development of religious education curriculum materials. (shrink)

Offering a unique, theory-based approach to international relations, An Introduction to International Relations provides readers with an ideal entry into the discipline. Succinct and clearly written, it covers the principal theories in the field, including the post-positivist theories that have gained prominence in recent years.

In this book Robert R. Clewis shows how certain crucial concepts in Kant's aesthetics and practical philosophy - the sublime, enthusiasm, freedom, empirical and intellectual interests, the idea of a republic - fit together and deepen our understanding of Kant's philosophy. He examines the ways in which different kinds of sublimity reveal freedom and indirectly contribute to morality, and discusses how Kant's account of natural sublimity suggests that we have an indirect duty with regard to nature. Unlike many other (...) studies of these themes, this book examines both the pre-critical Observations and the remarks that Kant wrote in his copy of the Observations. Finally, Clewis takes seriously Kant's claim that enthusiasm is aesthetically sublime, and shows how this clarifies Kant's views of the French Revolution. His book will appeal to all who are interested in Kant's philosophy. (shrink)

Beyond Language and Reason: Mysticism in Indian Buddhism Ilkka Pyysiäinen, 1993 Annales Academiæ Scientiarum Fennicæ Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum 66 Helsiniki, Sumolainen Tiedeakatemia.

Abstract The tshogs zhing, or field of assembly, is an important subject in Tibetan religious art. Typically, it focuses on one's own guru, seated at the crest of a great tree, with the gurus preceding him ranged in the sky above him and the deities of one's tradition ranged on the tree below him. The tshogs zhing is an object of visualisation in Tibetan guru yoga practices, and serves as both a ?map? of the Tibetan sacred cosmos and as an (...) index of the guru's crucial role in the tradition as a mediator between the practitioner on the one hand and the diachronic lineage of teachers and the synchronie pantheon of deities, on the other. (shrink)

Investigates the concept of recognition (anerkennen) under which term the German idealists discussed the Other, intersubjectivity, the interhuman.

This work considers the question of the personhood of God in Hegel. The first part examines Hegel's critique of Kant, focusing on and replying to Kant's attack on the theological proofs. The second part then explores the issue of divine personhood.

"Magliola's exposition of Derrida has been acclaimed as the best in English.

This article focuses on the conceptual relationship between awe and the experience of the sublime. I argue that the experience of the sublime is best conceived as a species of awe, namely, as aesthetic awe. I support this conclusion by considering the prominent conceptual relations between awe and the experience of the sublime, showing that all of the options except the proposed one suffer from serious shortcomings. In maintaining that the experience of the sublime is best conceived as aesthetic awe, (...) I draw from historical theories of the sublime as well as recent work in empirical psychology. (shrink)

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We have represented this book in the same form as it was first published. Hence any marks seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

The laugh- and/or smile-evoking potency of laughter was evaluated by observing responses of 128 subjects in three undergraduate psychology classes to laugh stimuli produced by a “laugh box.” Subjects recorded whether they laughed and/or smiled during each of 10 trials, each of which consisted of an 18-sec sample of laughter, followed by 42 sec of silence. Most subjects laughed and smiled in response to the first presentation of laughter. However, the polarity of the response changed quickly. By the 10th trial, (...) few subjects laughed and/or smiled, and most found the stimulus “obnoxious.” Although other research has described canned-laughter effects, it did not consider the hypothesis confirmed here, that laughter itself evokes laughter, perhaps by activating a laughter-specific auditory-feature detector. This result is relevant to the neurological basis of social communication, human ethology, and theories of speech production and perception. (shrink)

Kant’s geographical theory, which was informed by contemporary travel reports, diaries, and journals, developed before his so-called “critical turn.” There are several reasons to study Kant’s lectures and material on geography. The geography provided Kant with terms, concepts, and metaphors which he employed in order to present or elucidate the critical philosophy. Some of the germs of what would become Kant’s critical philosophy can already be detected in the geography course. Finally, Kant’s geography is also one source of some of (...) the empirical claims in his philosophical works, including the Critique of the Power of Judgment. To give an example of this, I examine his account of the sublime. (shrink)

This text by an established specialist in French deconstruction, written after his many years in Asia and in the West, celebrates both Buddhist and Christian cultures and the negative but fertile differences between them.

This volume is a continuation of Robert Greystones on the Freedom of the Will: Selections from His Commentary on the Sentences. From this, five of the most relevant questions were selected for editing and translation in this timely volume. This edition should prompt not just a footnote to, but a re-writing of the history of philosophy.