In this article, we distinguish between three approaches to ethics in school, each giving an interpretation of the expression ‘ethics in school’: the descriptive facts about ethics approach, roughly consisting of teaching empirical facts about moral matters to students; the moral fostering approach, consisting of mediating a set of given values to students; and the philosophical ethics (PE) approach, consisting of critically discussing and evaluating moral issues with students. Thereafter, three influential arguments for why there ought to be ethics in (...) school are discussed, and each argument is interpreted given each approach to ethics in school, respectively. Thereby, we evaluate which interpretation of ‘ethics in school’ produces the strongest arguments, and thus, which approach is best supported by these arguments. The conclusion is that there ought to be PE in school. (shrink)

We present results from a single case study based on semi-structured interviews with a student (a boy in school year 3) diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and his school staff after participating in a short and small-scale intervention carried out in a socio-economically disadvantaged Swedish elementary school in 2019. The student participated in a seven week long intervention with a total of 12 philosophical dialogues (ranging from 45 to 60 minutes). Two facilitators, both with years of facilitation experience and teacher (...) degree and at least BA in philosophy, facilitated the majority of the dialogues and mainly followed a ”routine” procedure. The student was interviewed in direct connection to the end of the intervention about his experiences from the dialogues and his perceptions about whether and how the dialogues had influenced him. The student’s two teachers, who had participated in the dialogues as participants, were interviewed as a pair, also in direct connection to the end of the intervention, while the school principal was interviewed two years after the study. These staff interviews concerned the staff’s experiences of the influence of the dialogues on the students within the intervention as well as transfer effects to other contexts in school. The data from the study include detailed elaborations from a student perspective of different effects on the student’s communicative and cognitive development, which are in several respects supported also by staff reports. The results show that the student was able, interested, and willing to participate in philosophical dialogues, and our data point to several positive outcomes for the student in the communicative and cognitive domains. (shrink)

Ethics is of vital importance to the Swedish educational system, as in many other educational systems around the world.Yet, it is unclear how ethics should be dealt with in school, and prior research and evaluations have found serious problems regarding ethics in education.The field of moral education lacks clear and widely accepted definitions of key concepts, and these ambiguities negatively impact both research and educational practice. This thesis draws a distinction between three approaches to ethics in school – the descriptive (...) ethics approach, the value transmission approach, and the inquiry ethics approach – and studies in what way (if at all) they are prescribed by the national curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school, how they relate to students’ moral reasoning about technology choices and online behaviour, and what pedagogical merits and disadvantages they have. Hopefully, this both contributes to reducing the ambiguities of the field, and to answering the question of how ethics should be dealt with in education. The descriptive ethics approach asserts that school should teach students empirical facts about ethics, such as what views and opinions people have. The value transmission approach holds that school should mediate some set of predefined values to the students and make sure the students come to accept these values.The inquiry ethics approach is the view that school should teach students to reason and think critically about ethics and to engage in ethical inquiry. The role of ethics in the curriculum has not been studied in light of the above distinction, in prior research,and such an investigation is undertaken here.The results suggest that ethics has a prominent, but complicated, role in the Swedish national curriculum. Although no explicit distinction is drawn or acknowledged in the curriculum, all three approaches are prescribed throughout the curriculum, albeit to different degrees. In the general section of the curriculum, the value transmission and inquiry ethics approaches are more extensively prescribed than the descriptive ethics approach. It was found that most of the syllabi contained explicit references to ethics, while some only contained implicit references to ethics, and two syllabi lacked references to ethics altogether. In the syllabi, the inquiry ethics approach is the most dominant, both in the sense of being present in the most syllabi, and in the sense of being more strongly prescribed in many of the syllabi where several approaches occur.The value transmission approach has the weakest role in the syllabi. In total, the inquiry ethics approach is the approach most strongly prescribed by the curriculum. But prior research has shown that inquiry ethics is very rarely implemented in the classroom. In this thesis, it is found that the inquiry ethics and the value transmission approaches are incompatible, given certain reasonable interpretations, which makes the finding that inquiry ethics is rarely implemented less surprising, since value transmission is practiced in schools. Some possible causes, and some consequences, of this is discussed. The students, in their moral reasoning about technology choices, reasoned in accordance with several classical normative theories – including consequentialism, deontological ethics and virtue ethics – and in doing so, they expressed reasoning that in the discussion is found to be in conflict with the values of the value foundation in the curriculum. These findings complement earlier findings, for example that students in their actions contradict the value foundation, by adding that such conflicts also exist in their reasoning. The existence of these conflicts is found to be problematic for a value transmission approach. Many of the students defended very restrictive views on disclosing personal information online, and prior research as well as the present data has shown that adults typically hold views that are very similar to these, concerning how they think that young people ought to act online. On the other hand, youths’ actual online behaviour, as reported in earlier studies, differs considerably from this. In line with this, the students also seemed to endorse a form of private morals view, according to which moral choices are simply up to one’s own taste, which would yield an escape exit from the restrictive views mentioned above, and permit any behaviour. In the discussion, it is argued that this is the result of an attempt at value transmission from the grown-up community, probably including teachers, which might seem to work, since the students claim to hold certain views, but which likely instead constitutes a false security, since these values are not actually accepted, but only paid lip service to, and the adults are therefore wrong in their belief that the students are protected by a certain set of values (that they think the students are upholding), since the students in fact do not uphold, and therefore do not act based upon, these values. This situation risks making the students more vulnerable than had no value transmission attempt been taken in the first place. Hence, the attempted value transmission runs the risk of counteracting its purpose of helping the students acquire a safe online behaviour. Throughout the moral reasoning mentioned above, extensive variations in the students’ reasoning were found, both interpersonally and intrapersonally, both in the decision method and in the rightness criterion dimensions, as well as in between the dimensions.The existence of such variations is a novel finding, and while possible applications in future research are discussed, it is also noted that this existence constitutes a reason to question the successfulness of both the value transmission and the inquiry ethics endeavours of the educational system. The results and discussions described above highlight the importance of investigating the merits of the different approaches. Several arguments that arise from the material of this thesis are presented, evaluated and discussed. The ability of each approach to fulfil some alleged key aims of ethics education is scrutinised; their abilities to educate for good citizenship, to educate for quality of life of the individual, and to facilitate better educational results in other subjects are all investigated, as well as the ability of each approach to help counteract the influence from online extremist propaganda aimed at young people and to promote safe online behaviour in general. It is concluded that the inquiry ethics approach has the strongest support from the material of this thesis. Some consequences for school practice are discussed, and it is concluded that changing the role of ethics in the curriculum would be beneficial, downplaying the role of value transmission and further increasing, and making more explicit and clear, the role of inquiry ethics. It is also shown that there are strong reasons for the inclusion of a new subject in the Swedish compulsory education with special focus on ethics. 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This article is about a coming project concerning a coherentist approach to ethics in school. The project has two main parts; one theoretical and one empirical. The former focuses on philosophical problems and issues concerning coherentism as a metaethical position in general, and particularly when applied to the field of value education, and the latter aims to study some consequences of a coherentist approach to the study of discussing ethical matters with children.Metaethical coherentism is a position in the discussion about (...) justification of moral judgements. According to coherentism, we build some kind of web in which different moral judgements are connected by some justification‐relation or the like. Some judgements might be more central than others, but these can be justified by the more particular and peripheral ones, and vice versa. Coherentism differs from foundationalism, according to which there are some foundational judgements that are not justified by any other judgements. The rest of our judgements are justified if they are justified by this foundation. We wish to study what benefits a coherentist approach might have in the study of ethical discussions in school. In Sweden, the educational system has as one of its main purposes to mediate a "value foundation" based on "Christian ethical tradition and western humanism" to the pupils. Suppose now that you have a foundationalist approach to ethical discussion in schools, as many seem to have had historically, and that some pupil expresses the judgement that some of his classmates have a lower value than him, due to the colour of their skin. This judgement conflicts with the judgement that the colour of ones skin does not have any bearing of ones value, included in the value foundation of the school. According to a foundationalist, we here have a conflict between foundational values, or so we can suppose. In this case, there is nothing obvious to do to resolve this conflict, because the foundational values cannot be justified; it is supposed that we simply realise the correctness of them by our moral intuition, or the like. A coherentist, on the other side, could point to how these two different judgements gain different amount of justification from other judgements, and thereby hopefully find consensus, and hence dissolve the conflict.Coherentism is not theoretically unproblematic, though. One problem is how to understand the justification‐relation. What does it mean that two propositions justify each other? Philosophers have discussed several different proposals. We give a new proposal, based on some of Arne Naess' theories. With regard to methods for ethical discussion in relation to a coherentistic approach, it seems as a "philosophy with children" approach will seem as a natural choice. (shrink)

Education for participation – Philosophizing back a "new" life after acquired brain injury.

In this paper, we are mainly concerned with coherentism as an approach to ethical dialog in school. We have two different but connected aims with the paper. The first aim is to say something about general philosophical questions relating to coherentism as a theory in metaethics, and especially in relation to value education; the second aim is to explore some possible implications of coherentism as a method in studying the enterprise of discussing ethical issues and questions with children as well (...) as the study of the actual ethical discussion in school. Furthermore, we evaluate the connection between a coherentistic approach to justification and the methodological parts of a Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, approach to ethics in school. Related to this, we scrutinize what implications this has for evaluating ethical learning within Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, as well as implications for evaluation of the Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, approaches as methods for dealing with ethical matters in school. (shrink)

There is a constant need for new ways to improve the Swedish school system. One such way could be to implement Matthew Lipman’s philosophy of education, which then must be proven compatible with the curriculum governing the Swedish school system. We restricted our examination to a comparison between Lipman’s Thinking in Education and the first chapter of the Swedish curriculum for upper secondary schools. We divided the results into three degrees of coherence: inconsistence, compatibility, and accordance, where accordance was a (...) stronger form of compatibility which would not only allow but encourage the implementation of Lipman’s philosophy of education. We found that the two parties were overall in accordance with each other, though with a few elements of mere compatibility. No inconsistencies were found. The parties were in accordance on especially two key points. Firstly, the critical, creative, and caring thinking emphasized by Lipman were all present in the curriculum. Secondly, there is in the curriculum an emphasis on the mediation of democratic values through democratic means, something inherent in Lipman’s community of inquiry. In conclusion, Lipman’s philosophy of education is not merely compatible, but in large part in accordance with the curriculum. (shrink)

Current approaches used in educational research and practice to evaluate the quality of written arguments often rely on structural analysis. In such assessments, credit is awarded for the presence of structural elements of an argument, such as claims, evidence, and rebuttals. In this article, we discuss limitations of such approaches, including the absence of criteria for evaluating the quality of the argument elements. We then present an alternative framework, based on the Rational Force Model (RFM), which originated from the work (...) of a Nordic philosopher Næss. Using an example of an argumentative essay, we demonstrate the potential of the RFM to improve argument analysis by focusing on the acceptability and relevance of argument elements, two criteria widely considered to be fundamental markers of argument strength. We outline possibilities and challenges with using the RFM in educational contexts and conclude by proposing directions for future research. (shrink)

In Swedish schools, the so-called ‘Participation Model’ is used to observe and analyse participation, with the intention of supporting an inclusive learning environment. While this model is widely promoted by government agencies, its theoretical alignment to the concept(s) of inclusion is not established. This article therefore compares and maps the six aspects of participation within the Participation Model (i.e. belonging, accessibility, interaction, autonomy, involvement and acceptance) with a hierarchically ordered set of commonly occuring definitions of inclusive education (ranging from the (...) lowest level, placement, to the highest, community). The Participation Model was found to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the lower levels of inclusion, as well as necessary conditions for the higher levels of inclusion. However, we show that the model suffers from construct underrepresentation and outline a few possible solutions intended to increase the theoretical alignment between the Participation Model and the higher levels of inclusive education. Finally, we suggest directions for further research. (shrink)

The high prevalence of brain injury incidents in adolescence and adulthood demands effective models for re-learning lost cognitive abilities. Impairment in brain injury survivors’ higher-level cognitive functions is common and a negative predictor for long-term outcome. We conducted two small-scale interventions (N = 12; 33.33% female) with persons with acquired brain injuries in two municipalities in Sweden. Age ranged from 17 to 65 years (M = 51.17, SD = 14.53). The interventions were dialogic, inquiry-based, and inspired by the Philosophy for (...) Children Programme, a participatory thinking skills approach with documented higher-order cognitive outcomes, such as developed argumentation skills, in other target groups. Philosophical dialogues were conducted once a week in the two groups, totalling 12 dialogues per group. Group argumentation development was measured through compared scores from structured observations of filmed dialogues early and late in the intervention. Large positive changes in mean scores from early to late in the intervention, together with constantly high facilitator quality, suggest argumentation development in the sample due to the intervention. (shrink)

A recent report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention in cooperation with the Swedish Security Service shows that the Internet has been extensively used to spread propaganda by proponents of violent political extremism, characterized by a worldview painted in black and white, an anti-democratic viewpoint, and intolerance towards persons with opposing ideas. We provide five arguments suggesting that philosophical dialogue with young persons would be beneficial to their acquisition of insights, attitudes and thinking tools for encountering such propaganda. (...) The arguments are based on stated requirements for problem solutions given by experts in violent political extremism, recent research about the effects of philosophical dialogue in young persons’ thinking skills, and parts of the basic theoretical framework of Philosophy for Children. Philosophical dialogues seem a promising way for young people to achieve a stronger democratic awareness and a more tenacious resistance against extremist views online. (shrink)

In this study, the age-old distinction between decision method and criterion of rightness, commonly employed in normative ethics, was used to attain a detailed understanding of inter- and intrapersonal variety in students' moral reasoning. A total of 24 Swedish students, 12–15 years of age, were interviewed. Inter- and intrapersonal varieties in and between the two dimensions of moral reasoning were found, constituting six novel forms of varieties. We describe several explanations proposed within the field of social-cognitive domain theory, and argue (...) that these do not suffice to explain all the found forms of varieties in students' moral reasoning. Some limitations of the present study are discussed, and some suggestions for future research are given. (shrink)

Persons with aphasia suffer from a loss of communication ability as a consequence of a brain injury. A small strand of research indicates effec- tiveness of dialogic interventions for communication development for persons with aphasia, but a vast amount of research studies shows its effectiveness for other target groups. In this paper, we describe the main parts of the hitherto technological development of an application named Dialogica that is (i) aimed at facilitating increased communicative participation in dialogic settings for persons (...) with aphasia and other communication disorders, (ii) based on comput- er game technology as well as on theory in dialogic education and argumenta- tion theory, and (iii) designed for mobile devices with larger screens. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe technological advances for supporting persons with aphasia in philosophical dialogues about personally relevant and contestable questions. A computer game-based application for iPads is developed and researched through Living Lab inspired workshops in order to promote the target group’s communicative participation during group argumentation. We outline some central parts of the background theory of the application and some of its main features, which are related to needs of the target group. Methodological issues connected to the design (...) and use of Living Labs with persons with aphasia are discussed. We describe a few problems with researching development of communicative participation during group argumentation using an app assisted intervention for the target group and suggest some possible solutions. (shrink)

Annually, more than ten million people in all age groups in the world experience an acquired brain injury, which is a brain injury caused after birth by external forces or certain internal factors. Brain injury survivors are often left with long-term impairments in cognitive, social, or emotional functioning. Despite a promising outset, research on the effectiveness of philosophical dialogues as an educational method for persons with ABI to increase their cognitive, social, and emotional functioning has, to our knowledge, been virtually (...) non-existent. The present research project targets this and uses a pretest-posttest and mixed-method triangulation design and attempts to measure effects of two small-scale interventions carried out in the northern part of Sweden. In this text, the project’s research design, data production, and data processing are described. (shrink)

'Value' is a central concept in all of the principles and methods applied in Lean Construction, but it is rather difficult to provide a precise definition of the term. The problem lies in the word value itself: its ambiguity and vagueness make theorization difficult. This paper investigates the philosophical concept of value from a Lean Construction perspective. Several elements that contribute to value are considered, including objective elements such as waste reduction, quality, price and functionality, and more subjective elements such (...) as design. The hypothesis of this paper is that the reduction or removal of elements that detract from value, such as waste and costs, is not the only means by which value may be increased. The Sorites paradox is used to form a cohesive perspective on some different meanings of the word ‗value‘. One of the known ‗solutions‘ of the paradox, utilization theory, is then explored through a case study in off-site construction that illustrates how different actors in the construction process view value, and how utility theory can be used to provide a consensus on value that is acceptable. In practice, ‗value‘ is ambiguous because actors generally value different things and these views seldom converge during projects. Our results indicate that the actors involved strive for value individually. Analysis using utility theory allows the actors to establish a shared conceptualization of value, expressed in monetary terms. The work described in this paper aims to improve our understanding of value and of how to design products in construction to improve value for clients of industrialized housing. (shrink)

A main issue in Swedish school debate is the question of how to teach the student a common value system based on democracy and western humanism. The debate is rather intense, to say the least. Not only is the premise that there exists one value system that we share a target for critique, but there is also the question of what value education is or could be. There is, as well, quite a body of research on children's moral development, where (...) many take as their departure the work of Kohlberg. However, there has been little or no attention on how the individual learner conceptualizes and makes meaning out of ethical issues. That is, descriptions of processes. In this paper we will present what we take to be urgent questions that need to be investigated against the background of prior research and practical work at Södra teatern in Stockholm, Sweden. For eight years in a row, Södra teatern has had as a main project to lead a practice on the subject of philosophy with children. Several groups of youths in the age of nine to eighteen have regularly met to discuss philosophical thoughts and problems, which in a democratic manner are settled for discussion by the participants. Today this philosophical practice has spread to the north of Sweden. In Backman's final exam within the teacher education she has explored the development of children's (7‐8 years old) ability to argue for different ethical positions, both verbally and in writing and painting. This practice has been inspired by the tradition at Södra teatern, but customized to fit a regular school class in Luleå, with very little experience of philosophical discussion. In the very short period of five weeks Backman has been able to see quite significant changes in the children's ability to argue for their ethical positions. The study was initiated by examining some argumentative abilities of the pupils, for instance the ability of expressing an argument for an ethical position in writing. In the final part of the study, the same ability was examined in very similar circumstances, and the augment of expressed arguments in writing was significant. Another consideration that was raised as a consequence of the study regards the pupil's conceptualizing of ethical issues. In some conversations about the notion of justice it became clear that children interpreted the term very differently. This is not very surprising but important to pay further attention to. As mentioned earlier, there has been very little attention on how individual children conceptualize ethical issues. In this paper we argue that more interest should be put on investigating these issues in more depth, and we will do this by an outlining of a research application. (shrink)

The gifted education research area is rapidly expanding in Sweden. In the context of very limited research nationally, demands are increasing for steering documents and addressing of student and teacher needs in practice. However, Swedish research on students that are ‘twice exceptional’—students classified as being both gifted and disabled (for instance, through a neurodevelopmental disorder such as ADHD)—is nearly non-existent. In this study, we present an exploratory single case study of a female student in school year seven based on semi-structured (...) individual interviews with the student and her two guardians regarding her educational situation. The data were first inductively coded and triangulated in collaboration between three of the authors. A fourth author later independently and deductively coded one-third of the data based on the previously inductively determined thematic structure and conducted a consensus interrater reliability check, exceeding 85% percent agreement. The three main themes are as follows: (1) multiplex perspectives on academic outcomes and expectations, (2) the intersection between twice exceptionality and academic work, and (3) information and perceptions about twice exceptionality. The results indicate several educational challenges and opportunities for twice exceptional students. Further research is needed regarding twice exceptional students in Sweden. (shrink)

Frankl's elaboration of his theory that man's primary motvational force is the search for meaning.

Available for the first time in English, this work explores a range of mental disorders in the context of Frankl's theory of human motivation. Skillfully translated and featuring extensive annotation, this English language edition remains true to the original while updating assessment and treatment protocols to be compatible with 21st century medicine. As the title suggests, On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders applies a theoretical treatise to the practical treatment of variety of disorders. This long-awaited addition to the (...) body of English language literature introduces Viktor Frankl's clinical insights to a new generation of mental health professionals, and has much to offer to practitioners of all levels of experience. (shrink)

The geometrical algebra hypothesis was once the received interpretation of Greek mathematics. In recent decades, however, it has become anathema to many. I give a critical review of all arguments against it and offer a consistent rebuttal case against the modern consensus. Consequently, I find that the geometrical algebra interpretation should be reinstated as a viable historical hypothesis.

Dr. Viktor Dörfler combines his background in developing and implementing AI with scholarly research on knowledge and cultivating talent to address misconceptions about AI. The Element explains what AI can and cannot do, carefully delineating facts from beliefs or wishful thinking. Filled with examples, this practical Element is thought-provoking. The purpose is to help CEOs figure out how to make the best use of AI, suggesting how to extract AI’s greatest value through appropriate task allocation between human experts and (...) AI. The author challenges the attribution of characteristics like understanding, thinking, and creativity to AI, supporting his argument with the ideas of the finest AI philosophers. He also discusses in depth one of the most sensitive AI-related topics: ethics. The readers are encouraged to make up their own minds about AI and draw their own conclusions rather than accepting opinions from people with vested interests or an agenda. (shrink)

Interview of Illia Davidenko, Kateryna Kruhlyk, Daria Popil with Viktor Kozlovskyi.

The aim of this paper is to examine whether philosophical dialogue can be an effective tool for persons with acquired brain injuries to regain lost abilities and develop new capabilities that are relevant for participating in society. The empirical data was collected from a philosophical practice, inspired by Philosophy for Children, with students at a specialized program for adult people with ABI at a Swedish folk high school. Persons with ABI may have difficulties taking standpoints and giving arguments for their (...) positions. For them it is necessary to re-learn and develop new thinking, participation and communication skills. Both students and their staff have answered questionnaires about the philosophical dialogues and are all of the opinion that the dialogues have had positive impact on the students. Results point to that philosophical dialogue can be effective for persons with ABI for functioning as citizens and as parts in a democratic society. A possible explanation is that the form and content of P4C correspond to important needs of people with ABI. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Interview of Illia Davidenko, Kateryna Kruhlyk, Daria Popil with Viktor Kozlovskyi.

Nudges have been criticized for working ‘in the dark’, influencing people without their full awareness. To assess whether this property renders nudging an illegitimate policy tool in liberal democracies, we argue that in scrutinizing nudge transparency, we should adequately divide our focus between nudging techniques, the nudgers employing them, and the nudgees subjected to them. We develop an account of what it means for nudgees to be ‘watchful’, a disposition that enables them to resist and circumvent nudges. We argue that (...) such ‘watchfulness’ should be cultivated if we want to implement nudges in legitimate, accountable, and democratic ways. (shrink)

A particularly strong reason to vaccinate against transmittable diseases, based on considerations of harm, is to contribute to the realization of population-level herd immunity. We argue, however, that herd immunity alone is insufficient for deriving a strong harm-based moral obligation to vaccinate in all circumstances, since the obligation significantly weakens well above and well below the herd immunity threshold. The paper offers two additional harm-based arguments that, together with the herd immunity argument, consolidates our moral obligation. First, we argue that (...) individuals should themselves aim not to expose others to risk of harm, and that this consideration becomes stronger the more non-vaccinated people there are, i.e., the further we are below herd immunity. Second, we elaborate on two pragmatic reasons to vaccinate beyond the realization of herd immunity, pertaining to instability of vaccination rates and population heterogeneity, and argue that vaccinating above the threshold should serve as a precautionary measure for buttressing herd immunity. We also show that considerations of harm have normative primacy in establishing this obligation over considerations of fairness. Although perfectly sound, considerations of fairness are, at worst secondary, or at best complementary to considerations of harm. (shrink)

Interview of Illia Davidenko, Kateryna Kruhlyk, Daria Popil with Viktor Kozlovskyi.

I present a systematic interpretation of the foundational purpose of constructions in ancient Greek geometry. I argue that Greek geometers were committed to an operationalist foundational program, according to which all of mathematics—including its entire ontology and epistemology—is based entirely on concrete physical constructions. On this reading, key foundational aspects of Greek geometry are analogous to core tenets of 20th-century operationalist/positivist/constructivist/intuitionist philosophy of science and mathematics. Operationalism provides coherent answers to a range of traditional philosophical problems regarding classical mathematics, such (...) as the epistemic warrant and generality of diagrammatic reasoning, superposition, and the relation between constructivism and proof by contradiction. Alleged logical flaws in Euclid can be interpreted as sound operationalist reasoning. Operationalism also provides a compelling philosophical motivation for the otherwise inexplicable Greek obsession with cube duplication, angle trisection, and circle quadrature. Operationalism makes coherent sense of numerous specific choices made in this tradition, and suggests new interpretations of several solutions to these problems. In particular, I argue that: Archytas’s cube duplication was originally a single-motion machine; Diocles’s cissoid was originally traced by a linkage device; Greek conic section theory was thoroughly constructive, based on the conic compass; in a few cases, string-based constructions of conic sections were used instead; pointwise constructions of curves were rejected in foundational contexts by Greek mathematicians, with good reason. Operationalism enables us to view the classical geometrical tradition as a more unified and philosophically aware enterprise than has hitherto been recognised. (shrink)

Sociological theories of space have so far not provided an in-depth analysis of online spaces. The paper addresses this issue by means of Löw’s relational theory of space. As this theory mainly focuses on material spaces, it is necessary to embrace the phenomenological perspective in order to apply it to the virtual realm. More recent phenomenological research has highlighted the ongoing mediatization or virtualization of the life-world. These theories, and presence research more generally, are useful for examining the layers of (...) virtual presence. This paper focuses on two emblematic types of spaces: multiplayer online role-playing games and Skype video chats. The first represents an online version of a Schutzian finite province of meaning, while Skyping is an example of how the paramount reality of everyday life expands into the virtual realm. Albeit differently, actors in both cases constitute hybrid, virtual-material spaces with various forms and degrees of virtual presence. User experiences in these spaces are in line with contemporary sociological diagnoses indicating the vanishing experience of living in space and the general tendency of late modernity to question previous social forms of modernity. (shrink)

I am honored to respond to Paul Guyer’s elaboration on the role of examples of perfectionism in Cavell’s and Kant’s philosophies. Guyer’s appeal to Kant’s notion of freedom opens the way for suggestive readings of Cavell’s work on moral perfectionism but also, as I will show, for controversy.There are salient aspects of both Kant’s and Cavell’s philosophy that are crucial to understanding perfectionism and, let me call it, perfectionist education, that I wish to emphasize in response to Guyer. In responding (...) to Guyer’s text, I shall do three things. First, I shall explain why I think it is misleading to speak of Cavell’s view that moral perfectionism is involved in a struggle to make oneself intelligible to oneself.. (shrink)

What happens if we think of children's play as a form of great art that we turn to and return to for inspiration, for education? If we can see play as art, then what and how can we learn from children's play or from playing with them? What can philosophy, or philosophers, learn from children's play? In this essay Viktor Johansson gives examples of what and when children can teach philosophers through play or, more specifically, how children's play can (...) teach philosophers about the relation between fiction and reality. It begins by exploring the educational relation between fiction and reality in recent revivals of literary humanism. Johansson gives examples from a preschool project of how children use fiction picture books and create new fiction in their play, and how they do so in ways that relate to previous philosophical considerations of literary fiction. To explore this, the essay enters into conversation with the work of Iris Murdoch on the playfulness of art. Through, and in contrast to, Murdoch's work, Johansson establishes that play can be great art through its nonpurposefulness and its use of skill and imagination. Moreover, turning to children's play becomes a method for attending to what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls philosophy's “natural history,” that is, a historicization of philosophical thinking that enables philosophers to learn from children. Johansson concludes by showing that encounters between fiction and play, and with children playing, can be an educational embroilment, not only between teacher and child, but between teacher, child, the visual, the material, and the philosophical in which all learn from one another. (shrink)

In past and modern psychophysics there are several unresolved methodological and philosophical problems of human and animal perception, including the outstanding question of the relational basis of whole psychophysics. Here the main issue is discussed: if, and to what extent, there are viable bridges between the traditional “gestalt” oriented approaches and the modern perceptual-cognitive perspectives in psychophysics. Thereby the key concept of psychological “frame of reference” is presented by pointing to Hermann Ebbinghaus' geometric-optical illusions, on the one hand, and Max (...) Wertheimer's treatment of the traditional transposition phenomenon, on the other hand. A much-needed theoretical reorientation of future research may help to overcome the philosophical narrowness of present-day human and comparative psychophysics. (shrink)

Reorganization of cell organelle‐deprived host red blood cells by the apicomplexan malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum enables their cytoadherence to endothelial cells that line the microvasculature. This increases the time red blood cells infected with mature developmental stages remain within selected organs such as the brain to avoid the spleen passage, which can lead to severe complications and cumulate in patient death. The Maurer's clefts are a novel secretory organelle of parasite origin established by the parasite in the cytoplasm of the (...) host red blood cell in order to facilitate the establishment of cytoadherence by conducting the trafficking of immunovariant adhesins to the host cell surface. Another important function of the organelle is the sorting of other proteins the parasite traffics into its host cell. Although the organelle is of high importance for the pathology of malaria, additional putative functions, structure, and genesis remain shrouded in mystery more than a century after its discovery. In this review, we highlight our current knowledge about the Maurer's clefts and other novel secretory organelles established within the host cell cytoplasm by human‐pathogenic malaria parasites and other parasites that reside within human red blood cells. (shrink)