In this theoretical essay, we respond to recent scholarship on decolonizing mathematics that asserts that so-called “Western” mathematics is inherently colonialist – that is, in service of the economic and political control of European or wealthy nations over countries of the Global South. Although generally sympathetic with that literature, we argue against some of its presumptions, in part, by distinguishing “Western” or academic mathematics from its recontextualization for schools. First, we argue that, although colonialist messages and values can be disseminated (...) as part of that recontextualization, it is not clear that academic mathematics is inherently colonialist. Then, we offer a suggestive insight into what it might mean to decolonize school mathematics through a pedagogical approach based on research on native language learning, called the “subordination of teaching to learning.” The approach uses tasks that invite learners to use their indigenous mental powers (or brilliance) through engaging in dialogic interactions with themselves and others about objects and relations among them. To illustrate the subordination of teaching to learning, we present an example of how learners use their learning powers to educate their awareness and build mathematical ideas and reasoning; thereby experiencing the joy of their intellectual efforts. (shrink)

The persistent educational challenges that fractions pose call for developing novel instructional methods to better prepare students for fraction learning. Here, we examined the effects of a 24-session, Cuisenaire rod intervention on a building block for symbolic fraction knowledge, continuous and discrete non-symbolic proportional reasoning, in children who have yet to receive fraction instruction. Participants were 34 second-graders who attended the intervention (intervention group) and 15 children who did not participate in any sessions (control group). As attendance at the intervention (...) sessions was irregular (median = 15.6 sessions, range = 1–24), we specifically examined the effect of the number of sessions completed on their non-symbolic proportional reasoning. Our results showed that children who attended a larger number of sessions increased their ability to compare non-symbolic continuous proportions. However, contrary to our expectations, they also decreased their ability to compare misleading discretized proportions. In contrast, children in the Control group did not show any change in their performance. These results provide further evidence on the malleability of non-symbolic continuous proportional reasoning and highlight the rigidity of counting knowledge interference on discrete proportional reasoning. (shrink)

Western art gardens have enjoyed a chequered relationship with philosophical aesthetics. At different times, they have been both lauded and rejected as exemplars of art, and, for most of the last 150 or so years, they have been largely ignored. However, during the last 25 years, there has been a welcome resurgence of philosophical interest in such gardens. This study situates the work stemming from this revival of interest in its historical context and assesses its adequacy in accounting for gardens (...) in accordance with a range of pan-art criteria. The study argues that contemporary philosophical accounts of gardens are inadequate in some important ways, particularly with respect to gardens’ temporality, ontology, and arthood, and the ways in which gardens are experienced. In response to the arguments of Amie Thomasson, Dominic McIver Lopes, and some other contemporary philosophers, which advocate philosophical accounts of individual arts rather than pan-art accounts, the study develops a partial, new account of gardens that aims to remedy the perceived inadequacies in existing accounts. The new account claims that gardens are singular, not multiple, artworks and that they have an identity not unlike that possessed by humans and other animals; that, metaphorically speaking, our garden experiences may be helpfully illuminated by the application of theories developed in the context of contemporary, improvisatory dance; and that the “ordinariness” of many of gardens materials may be better understood in terms of Arthur Danto’s claim that esse est interpretari, that is, that meaning and value derive from the interpretative process. The new account also proposes personhood as a potentially useful heuristic for understanding how gardens are experienced and understood. The concept of “garden,” and the related constitutive garden aspects, features, and issues are established at the opening of the study with reference to an actual garden. Thereafter, the sources on which the study draws, and which it critiques, are all archival. They include recent philosophical monographs by Mara Miller (The Garden as Art), Stephanie Ross (What Gardens Mean), and David Cooper (A Philosophy of Gardens), and a range of historical and other contemporary monographs and papers written by philosophers, garden historians, and landscape architects and theorists. (shrink)

Niccolo Machiavelli, one of the eminent minds of the Italian Renaissance, spent much of a long and active lifetime trying to determine and understand what exceptional qualities of human character-- and what surrounding elements of fortune, luck, and timing-- made great men great leaders successful in war and peace. In perhaps the liveliest book on Machiavelli in years, Michael A. Ledeen measures contemporary movers and doers against the timeless standards established by the great Renaissance writer. Titans of statecraft (Margaret Thatcher, (...) Francois Mitterrand, Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton) business and finance (Bill Gates) Wall Street and investing (Warren Buffett) the military (Colin Powell), and sports (Michael Jordan) are judged by Machiavelli's precepts on leadership and the proper use of power. The result is a wide-ranging and scintillating study that illuminates the thoughts of the Renaissance master and the actions of today's truly towering figures as well as the character-challenged pretenders to greatness. Here is an exceptional book on Machiavelli and his ultra-realistic exploration of human nature-- then and now. (shrink)

In this masterful work, both an illumination of Kant's thought and an important contribution to contemporary legal and political theory, Arthur Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant's political philosophy. In addition to providing a clear and coherent statement of the most misunderstood of Kant's ideas, Ripstein also shows that Kant's views remain conceptually powerful and morally appealing today.

The relationship between formal logic and general philosophy is discussed under headings such as A Re-examination of Our Tense-Logical Postulates, Modal Logic in the Style of Frege, and Intentional Logic and Indeterminism.

What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, _What Art Is _challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the (...) viewer: interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato’s definition of art in _The Republic_, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol’s famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent. Throughout, Danto considers the contributions of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and artists from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol, in this far-reaching examination of the interconnectivity and universality of aesthetic production. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1962, given by Arthur N. Prior (1914-1969).

In The Sleepwalkers and The Act of Creation Arthur Koestler provided pioneering studies of scientific discovery and artistic inspiration, the twin pinnacles of human achievement. The Ghost in the Machine looks at the dark side of the coin: our terrible urge to self-destruction... Could the human species be a gigantic evolutionary mistake? To answer that startling question Koestler examines how experts on evolution and psychology all too often write about people with an 'antiquated slot-machine model based on the naively (...) mechanistic world-view of the nineteenth century. His brilliant polemic helped to instigate a major revolution in the life sciences, yet its 'glimpses of an alternative world-view' form only the background to an even more challenging analysis of the human predicament. Perhaps, he suggests, we are a species in which ancient and recent brain structures - or reason and emotion - are not fully co-ordinated. Such in-built deficiencies may explain the paranoia, violence and insanity that are central strands of human history. And however disturbing we find such issues, Koestler contends, it is only when we face our limitations head-on that we can hope to find a remedy. (shrink)

The realist programme has degenerated by now to the point where it is quite beyond salvage. A token of this degeneration is that there are altogether too many realisms. It is as though by splitting into a confusing array of types and kinds, realism has hoped that some one variety might yet escape extinct. I shall survey the debate, and some of these realisms, below. Here I would just point out the obvious; that in so far as the successes of (...) science mount while realism continues to decline we must conclude that scientific success lends no support to realism. Since it is unlikely to support anti-realism, we have some reason to suspect that the philosophical debate over realism does not concern issues that can be settled by developments in the sciences, no matter how successful science may be. Further, since that success grounds a culture of acceptance for science and its entities, we have reason to believe that the existence of those entities is also not actually the issue that concerns realism. Afortiori, it is not the issue that concerns anti-realism either; nor, I might add, is anti-realism the winner in the philosophical debate that realism has lost. (shrink)

_A lively meditation on the nature of art by one of America's most celebrated art critics_ What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, _What Art Is _challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined (...) by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the viewer: interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato’s definition of art in _The Republic_, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol’s famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent. Throughout, Danto considers the contributions of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and artists from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol, in this far-reaching examination of the interconnectivity and universality of aesthetic production. (shrink)

Mechanisms to engage lay citizens in science and technology are currently in vogue worldwide. While some engagement exercises aim to influence policy making, research suggests that they have had little discernable impacts in this regard. We explore the potentials and challenges of facilitating citizen engagement in nanotechnology from the “topdown,” addressing the following questions: Can academics and others within institutions initiate meaningful engagement with unorganized lay citizens from the top-down? Can they facilitate effective engagement among citizens, scientists, and policy makers (...) while building citizen engagement capacities? Is it possible to create independent bottom-up citizen engagement in scientific and technological issues from the top-down, and what are the challenges in doing so? Our experiences show that although academics can build citizens' individual, collective, and political capacities to engage with each other, scientists, and policy makers, this work is enormously time and energy intensive, and institutional support is needed to sustain it. (shrink)

This paper considers four lines of objection to the efficacy or worth of Grice's cancellability test for conversational implicatures – the coherence objection, the entailment objection, the sarcasm objection, and the ambiguity objection. I argue that the test survives these objections relatively unscathed; and hence conclude that the cancellability test is still a significant, useful, reliable indicator at the semantics/pragmatics interface.

As a post-Gricean pragmatic theory, Relevance Theory (RT) takes as its starting point the question of how hearers bridge the gap between sentence meaning and speaker meaning. That there is such a gap has been a given of linguistic philosophy since Grice’s (1967) Logic and Conversation. But the account that relevance theory offers of how this gap is bridged, although originating as a development of Grice’s co-operative principle and conversational maxims, differs from other broadly Gricean accounts in certain fundamental respects, (...) and leads to a stance on the nature of language, meaning and communication which is at odds, not only with the view of Grice himself, but also with the view common to most post-Fregean philosophy of language. (shrink)

Two principles of locality used in discussions about quantum mechanics are distinguished. The intuitive no-action-at-a distance requirement is called physical locality. There is also a mathematical requirement of a kind of factorizability which is referred to as "locality". It is argued in this paper that factorizability is not necessary for physical locality. Ways of producing models that are physically local although not factorizable which are concerned with correlations between the behavior of pairs of particles are suggested. These models can account (...) for all the quantum mechanical single and joint probabilities. (shrink)

In the May 15, 1935 issue of Physical Review Albert Einstein co-authored a paper with his two postdoctoral research associates at the Institute for Advanced Study, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. The article was entitled “Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” (Einstein et al. 1935). Generally referred to as “EPR”, this paper quickly became a centerpiece in the debate over the interpretation of the quantum theory, a debate that continues today. The paper features a striking case (...) where two quantum systems interact in such a way as to link both their spatial coordinates in a certain direction and also their linear momenta (in the same direction). As a result of this “entanglement”, determining either position or momentum for one system would fix (respectively) the position or the momentum of the other. EPR use this case to argue that one cannot maintain both an intuitive condition of local action and the completeness of the quantum description by means of the wave function. This entry describes the argument of that 1935 paper, considers several different versions and reactions, and explores the ongoing significance of the issues they raise. (shrink)

Cannabis use in some individuals can meaningfully introduce de novo risk for the initiation of opioid use and development of opioid use disorder. These risks may be particularly high during adolescence when cannabis use may disrupt critical periods of neurodevelopment. Current research studying the combination of genetic and environmental factors involved in substance use disorders is poorly understood. More research is needed, particularly to identify which adolescents are most at risk and to develop effective interventions addressing contributing factors such as (...) trauma and psychiatric comorbidity. (shrink)

(Draft copy published as “Science Made Up: Constructivist Sociology of Scientific Knowledge.” In P. Galison and D. Stump (eds.) The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 231-54.).

In this paper I argue that questions about the semantics of rigid designation are commonly and illicitly run together with distinct issues, such as questions about the metaphysics of essence and questions about the theoretical legitimacy of the possible-worlds framework. I discuss in depth two case studies of this phenomenon – the first concerns the relation between rigid designation and reference, the second concerns the application of the notion of rigidity to general terms. I end by drawing out some conclusions (...) about the relations between rigid designation, semantic frameworks, reference, and essence. (shrink)

In the contemporary discussion of hidden variable interpretations of quantum mechanics, much attention has been paid to the “no hidden variable” proof contained in an important paper of Kochen and Specker. It is a little noticed fact that Bell published a proof of the same result the preceding year, in his well-known 1966 article, where it is modestly described as a corollary to Gleason's theorem. We want to bring out the great simplicity of Bell's formulation of this result and to (...) show how it can be extended in certain respects. (shrink)

The first major study since the 1930s of the relationship between American Transcendentalism and Asian religions, and the first comprehensive work to include post-Civil War Transcendentalists like Samuel Johnson, this book is encyclopedic in scope. Beginning with the inception of Transcendentalist Orientalism in Europe, Versluis covers the entire history of American Transcendentalism into the twentieth century, and the profound influence of Orientalism on the movement--including its analogues and influences in world religious dialogue. He examines what he calls "positive Orientalism," which (...) recognizes the value and perennial truths in Asian religions and cultures, not only in the writings of major figures like Thoreau and Emerson, but also in contemporary popular magazines. Versluis's exploration of the impact of Transcendentalism on the twentieth-century study of comparative religions has ramifications for the study of religious history, comparative religion, literature, politics, history, and art history. (shrink)

Historian Arthur Herman traces the roots of declinism and shows how major thinkers, past and present, have contributed to its development as a coherent ideology of cultural pessimism. From Nazism to the Sixties counterculture, from Britain's Fabian socialists to America's multiculturalists, and from Dracula and Freud to Robert Bly and Madonna, this work examines the idea of decline in Western history and sets out to explain how the conviction of civilization's inevitable end has become a fixed part of the (...) modern Western imagination. Through a series of biographical portraits spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, the author traces the roots of declinism and aims to show how major thinkers of the past and present, including Nietzsche, DuBois, Sartre, and Foucault, have contributed to its development as a coherent ideology of cultural pessimism. (shrink)

This brief introduction to a special issue of Disputatio succinctly summarizes John Perry’s pluri-propositionalist reflexive framework and notes some potential applications to varieties of context-sensitivity.

If scientists can successfully clone sheep, will humans be next? Today's headlines read like a science fiction novel! Due Consideration takes a poignant look at the rapidly changing field of biomedicine and the consequences it will have on our lives. Arthur Caplan, one of this nation's leading bioethicists, explores these issues and analyzes moral questions including: * Will we retain our essential humanity if we modify our biological blueprint? * Would it be irresponsible to procreate without a thorough genetic (...) examination? * Who will decide if physical traits like short stature and baldness are considered diseases? * Can biomedicine make our lives better? You'll also learn about the most current and controversial topics such as: * Cloning, abortion and assisted suicide. * Genetically engineering a human to be immune from infectious diseases. * The ability to "design" our children from head to toe. * Diagnosing and treating illnesses during fetal development. * Programs to prevent the transmission of HIV. No other book on the market today combines this analytic clarity with the latest from medical journals and media headlines. Now, you can decide for yourself what the future ought to hold in store. (shrink)

What we represent to ourselves behind the appear- ances exists only in our understanding . . . [having] only the value of memoria technica or formula whose form, because it is arbitrary and irrelevant, varies . . . with the standpoint of our culture.

In this essay we expand the notion of thinking by emphasizing the provocation and urgency to think and by reconceptualizing thinking as an embodied practice. The aim is to expand Lipman and Sharp’s approach to philosophical inquiry with children and show how other ways of thinking can be included. We strive to unfold a way of “thinking” that is both different from rationality (critical thinking) as well as from creative and caring thinking. In the first part of the paper, we (...) discuss the merits of Lipman and Sharp’s critical, creative and caring thinking within the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). We then expand Lipman/Sharp’s philosophical method through Ekkehart Marten’s Five-finger Model, which allows for different philosophical approaches. In the second half of the paper, we draw on Martin Heidegger’s What is called thinking? to develop his concept of the “call” to think together with its related notions of provocation and urgency. Building on this, we draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty to show how this call is not an intellectual activity or mere exercise of the “mind” but rather affects our entire existence. As such, thinking becomes a response to an existential urgency that is an embodied practice. Using concepts like embodiment, affect, and sensibility, we try to widen our conception of thinking in a CPI. Finally, we hope this will allow facilitators to hear the unique voice of every child so that no one is left unheard. (shrink)