This work aims to clarify the nature of the philosophy of education, intending to indicate both the limits and the uses of philosophical criticism of educational aims and concepts. It is based upon the fact that education is a subject full of unexamined presumptions.

John Dewey argued that democracy is a way of life. Over the course of a professional career which lasted nearly seven decades, Dewey developed a comprehensive social philosophy which had as its central purpose to engage in the project of realizing democracy as a way of life. This dissertation examines John Dewey's democratic theory as found in his four major political works and myriad occasional addresses during the period between the world wars. Dewey argued that capitalism, and particularly the pecuniary (...) culture of capitalism, represented a challenge to realizing democracy in America. The context of industrial capitalism during the depression era represented a challenge to liberalism, both in thought and practice. This dissertation examines Dewey's call for a reconstruction of liberalism in order to realize democracy. I argue that his mature political writings are best understood as an attempt to reconcile this fourfold matrix which included the material context of industrial capitalism, the institutional context of liberal political institutions, the intellectual context of liberal political thought, and the normative vision of realizing democracy as a way of life. (shrink)

In this paper the border is evaluated as a fold of power relations in which sovereign capacity and competence is marshalled alongside strategies of control, surveillance, and risk management to constitute, what we call, a zone of frontier government. We advance the argument that the border is a site for both negative and positive power, for insertion and subtraction, and that the assemblage of surveillance and compliance regimes are "run" not so much in the furtherance of a precautionary or pre-emptive (...) end-state, but as intermediate values that are sufficiently malleable by an invigorated sovereign, expressed in the residue of discretion in and between the many border agencies. Our analysis is based on extensive policy and program documents, as well as twenty-five interviews with officials in various agencies engaged in the US-Canada and, particularly, the Windsor-Detroit corridor. Normal 0 false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

As good a definition as any of a _philosophical_ conundrum is a problem all of whose possible solutions are unsatisfactory. The problem of understanding the springs of action for morally responsible agents is commonly recognized to be such a problem. The origin, nature, and explanation of freely-willed actions puzzle us today as they did the ancients Greeks, and for much the same reasons. However, one can carry this ‘perennial-puzzle’ sentiment too far. The unsatisfactory nature of philosophical theories is a more (...) or less matter, and some of them have admitted of improvement over time. This, at any rate, is what we self-selecting metaphysicians tend to suppose, and I will pursue that high calling by suggesting a few improvements to a theory of metaphysical freedom, or freedom of the will. (shrink)

The original essays in this volume, while written from diverse perspectives, share the common aim of building a constructive dialogue between two currents in philosophy that seem not readily allied: Wittgenstein, who urges us to bring our words back home to their ordinary uses, recognizing that it is our agreements in judgments and forms of life that ground intelligibility; and feminist theory, whose task is to articulate a radical critique of what we say, to disrupt precisely those taken-for-granted agreements in (...) judgments and forms of life. Wittgenstein and feminist theorists are alike, however, in being unwilling or unable to "make sense" in the terms of the traditions from which they come, needing to rely on other means—including telling stories about everyday life—to change our ideas of what sense is and of what it is to make it. For both, appeal to grounding is problematic, but the presumed groundedness of particular judgments remains an unavoidable feature of discourse and, as such, in need of understanding. For feminist theory, Wittgenstein suggests responses to the immobilizing tugs between modernist modes of theorizing and postmodern challenges to them. For Wittgenstein, feminist theory suggests responses to those who would turn him into the "normal" philosopher he dreaded becoming, one who offers perhaps unorthodox solutions to recognizable philosophical problems. In addition to an introductory essay by Naomi Scheman, the volume’s twenty chapters are grouped in sections titled "The Subject of Philosophy and the Philosophical Subject," "Wittgensteinian Feminist Philosophy: Contrasting Visions," "Drawing Boundaries: Categories and Kinds," "Being Human: Agents and Subjects," and "Feminism’s Allies: New Players, New Games." These essays give us ways of understanding Wittgenstein and feminist theory that make the alliance a mutually fruitful one, even as they bring to their readings of Wittgenstein an explicitly historical and political perspective that is, at best, implicit in his work. The recent salutary turn in philosophy toward taking history seriously has shown how the apparently timeless problems of supposedly generic subjects arose out of historically specific circumstances. These essays shed light on the task of feminist theorists—along with postcolonial, queer, and critical race theorists—to "rotate the axis of our examination" around whatever "real need[s]" might emerge through the struggles of modernity’s Others. Contributors are Nancy E. Baker, Nalini Bhushan, Jane Braaten, Judith Bradford, Sandra W. Churchill, Daniel Cohen, Tim Craker, Alice Crary, Susan Hekman, Cressida J. Heyes, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Christine M. Koggel, Bruce Krajewski, Wendy Lynne Lee, Hilda Lindemann Nelson, Deborah Orr, Rupert Read, Phyllis Rooney, and Janet Farrell Smith. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves is a rhetorically powerful but philosophically unconvincing attempt to show that a deterministic and ontologically reductionist, but epistemologically pluralist, outlook may peacefully coexist with a robust acceptance of human freedom and moral responsibility. The key to understanding the harmony rests in recognizing that freedom is not a metaphysical or physical condition but is instead a product of deeply embedded social practices. I argue that Dennett's project rests on an unargued and implausible deflationary stance toward basic (...) metaphysics. (shrink)

In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and (...) the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine? Paul O’Connor -/- 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age Arpad Szakolczai -/- 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market Tom Boland -/- 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence Agnes Horvath -/- 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation? Daniel Gati -/- 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void Ray Griffin -/- 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal Stephen Turner -/- 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics Marius Ion Benta -/- 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0 Thomas S.J. Smith -/- 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate Janos Mark Szakolczai -/- 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena Paul O’Connor -/- Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social? Marius Ion Benta. (shrink)

The OT and the NT have each one apocalyptic book: Daniel and Revelation. Both books consist of richly imaginative visions of the final triumph of God over the forces of evil—a theme and a genre of religious writing which enjoyed popularity in the inter-testimental period and was particularly consoling to devout Jews in times of persecution: Dn during the Seleucid persecution which culminated in the profanation of the Temple in 167 BC, and Rev during the persecution of Domitian circa (...) AD 95. The very name indicates the drawing back of the veil from the secret design of God for the triumph of His Kingdom; but not everything is clearly revealed, and the history of the interpretations of Rev is as complicated as it is unrewarding. Nevertheless the main themes stand out: the Church and its struggle against Satan, and Christ whom God has appointed Judge to condemn the enemies of His people. (shrink)

The OT and the NT have each one apocalyptic book: Daniel and Revelation. Both books consist of richly imaginative visions of the final triumph of God over the forces of evil—a theme and a genre of religious writing which enjoyed popularity in the inter-testimental period and was particularly consoling to devout Jews in times of persecution: Dn during the Seleucid persecution which culminated in the profanation of the Temple in 167 BC, and Rev during the persecution of Domitian circa (...) AD 95. The very name indicates the drawing back of the veil from the secret design of God for the triumph of His Kingdom; but not everything is clearly revealed, and the history of the interpretations of Rev is as complicated as it is unrewarding. Nevertheless the main themes stand out: the Church and its struggle against Satan, and Christ whom God has appointed Judge to condemn the enemies of His people. (shrink)

In Cajetan's Biblical Commentaries, Michael O'Connor argues that Cajetan's motive was more 'Catholic Reform' than 'Counter-Reformation', and that his method was a bold hybrid of scholasticism and Renaissance humanism, correcting the Vulgate's errors and expounding the text according to the literal sense.

In this paper, I examine some main threads of the identification stage of Scotus's project in the fourth chapter of De Primo, where he tries to show that a first efficient cause must have the attributes of simplicity, intellect, will, and infinity. Many philosophers are favorably disposed towards one or another argument such as Scotus's (e.g., the cosmological argument from contingency) purporting to show that there is an absolutely first efficient cause. How far can Scotus take us from this starting (...) point towards the ultimate aim of establishing the existence of a being more recognizably identifiable as God? (shrink)

This is a critical review of David O'Connor's book, God and Inscrutable Evil.

In The Origins of Unfairness, Cailin O’Connor develops a series of evolutionary game models to show that gender might have emerged to solve coordination problems in the division of labor. One assumption of those models is that agents engage in gendered social learning. This assumption puts the explanatory cart before the horse. How did early humans have a well-developed system of gendered social learning before the gendered division of labor? This paper develops a pair of models that show it is (...) possible for the gendered division of labor to arise on more minimal assumptions. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 1-2, Page 81-102, January-March 2022. In The Origins of Unfairness, Cailin O’Connor develops a series of evolutionary game models to show that gender might have emerged to solve coordination problems in the division of labor. One assumption of those models is that agents engage in gendered social learning. This assumption puts the explanatory cart before the horse. How did early humans have a well-developed system of gendered social learning before the gendered division (...) of labor? This paper develops a pair of models that show it is possible for the gendered division of labor to arise on more minimal assumptions. (shrink)

A good deal of attention has been given in recent philosophy of religion to the question of whether we can sensibly attribute to God a form of knowledge which the 16th-century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina termed "middle knowledge". Interest in the doctrine has been spurred by a recognition of its intimate connection to certain conceptions of providence, prophecy, and response to petitionary prayer. According to defenders of the doctrine, which I will call "Molinism", the objects of middle knowledge are (...) all the true counterfactuals of the form, 'If C were to occur, then S would freely do A', where C specifies a particular set of circumstances. (Such propositions are usually referred to as "counterfactuals of freedom" - hereafter "CFs".)' I will try to assess the current status of two distinct questions: (1) Are there true CFs? and (2) Could God know true CFs if there are any? Obviously, Molinism must answer both questions affirmatively. Most of the discussion has focused on the first question. I hope to show that this approach has been a dialectical mistake on the part of critics of Molinism, for the difficulties of giving an affirmative answer to question (2) are, I believe, far easier to state clearly and convincingly. (shrink)

"Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false belief. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it irrelevant to many (...) people whether they believe true things or not? In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively."–Publisher’s description. (shrink)

In this important new book, David O'Connor discusses both logical and empirical forms of the problem of inscrutable evil, perennially the most difficult ...

Three critics of Freedom Evolves (Dennett 2003) bring out important differences in philosophical outlook and method. Mele's thought experiments are supposed to expose the importance, for autonomy, of personal history, but they depend on the dubious invocation of mere logical or conceptual possibility. Fischer defends the Basic Argument for incompatibilism, while Taylor and I choose to sidestep it instead of disposing of it. Where does the burden of proof lie? O'Connor's candid expression of allegiance to traditional ideas that I (...) reject highlights a fundamental difference in assumptions about how—and why—to do philosophy. There are indeed definable varieties of free will that are incompatible with determinism. Do they matter? I have argued, against philosophical tradition, that they don't. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: To Prove a Possibility Mackie's Response Proving a Possibility The Logical Argument from Evil Suggested Reading.

The concepts of responsibility and causation are entangled at various points. Different considerations arise depending on whether one focuses on responsibility for one’s very actions, or on the consequences of one’s actions which are partly the result of many factors outside one’s control.

This chapter contains sections titled: Justified and Compensated Suffering and Death Afterlife A Theistic Variation on the Hypothesis of Indifference Verdict on the Greater‐Good Defense Suggested Reading.

This chapter contains sections titled: Side‐Effects of Wykstra's Noseeum Defense Verdict on Noseeum Defenses Evaluating van Inwagen's Second Skeptical Defense Overall Verdict on Skeptical Defenses On to Substantive Defenses Suggested Reading.

This chapter contains sections titled: Hick and Swinburne Moral Evil and the Free‐Will Defense Natural Disasters and other Terrible Things, and the Free‐Will Defense Suggested Reading.

This chapter begins with the most economical response to the conclusion that contingent existence is founded in necessary being (NB). It illustrates how one might come to see subtle entailment relations between properties that at first seem mutually independent. The author argues that there must be an internal connection between necessary existence (N), and any other essential features of NB. The chapter highlights that there can be only one kind of NB, whose properties are particulars bound up in relations of (...) mutual entailment. It discusses the varieties of chaos by first considering single‐stage models, of which there are three basic varieties: immutable chaos, abundant chaos and random chaos. The chapter considers three related and more substantial objections to the design inference from fine‐tuning. All of them question the possibility space the argument invokes or the probability judgments that are drawn. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem in Focus Draper's Indirect Argument Rowe's Direct Argument Suggested Reading.

This chapter contains sections titled: Logical Possibility and Impossibility J. L. Mackie's Argument Interim Verdict: ‘Not Proved’ Suggested Reading.

Many familiar modal claims are clearly made against some set of background assumptions, as when making such claims, we hold fixed certain background truths, and intend to call attention to the fact that the ‘necessity’ in question is an invariable consequence of those truths. Ordinary explanations of particular phenomena that draw upon scientific theories are replete with modal concepts. Necessity plays a yet deeper role in the practice of formulating scientific theories. Alongside the ever increasing constraints of accumulating empirical evidence, (...) theories are always held to the constraint of logical and mathematical consistency. This chapter expresses common philosophical claims concerning the place of modality in scientific explanations that have nonetheless been heavily challenged, especially in the twentieth century. It also considers and criticizes a range of views that stand opposed to robust modal realism. (shrink)