This landmark study brings together a comprehensive collection of readings on Educational Thought from Antiquity to the Present. It includes four volumes and over 100 different selections: Vol 1: Classic/Early Modern (to 1945) Vol 2: Modern (1945-1979) Vol 3/4: Postmodern (1979-present) From Montaigne to Chomsky, the editor has included articles from some of the Western world's most influential educational thinkers alongside authoritative voices from the field to show a full spectrum of ideas about Education, its purpose and objectives. The first (...) volume includes a lead essay by the editor on the nature of Educational Thought and the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education. Each volume also includes its own introduction. Taken together, the volumes provide an unparalleled resource featuring broad coverage of the subject with historical depth and contemporary relevance. (shrink)

Condorcet's understanding of the application of the philosophy of natural sceince to social science.

The desire to minimize the number of individual new entities postulated is often referred to as quantitative parsimony. Its influence on the default hypotheses formulated by scientists seems undeniable. I argue that there is a wide class of cases for which the preference for quantitatively parsimonious hypotheses is demonstrably rational. The justification, in a nutshell, is that such hypotheses have greater explanatory power than less parsimonious alternatives. My analysis is restricted to a class of cases I shall refer to as (...) additive. Such cases involve the postulation of a collection of qualitatively identical individual objects which collectively explain some particular observed phenomenon. Especially clear examples of this sort occur in particle physics. 1 Introduction 2 Particle physics: a case study 3 Three kinds of simplicity 4 Explanatory power 5 Explanation and non-observation 6 Parsimony and scientific methodology 7 Conclusions. (shrink)

"This book is a comprehensive attack on several of the views that have been most influential in the philosophy of psychology during the last two decades. Professor Baker argues that mentalistic notions should not be eliminated, and need not be explained in terms of other notions, in cognitive science.' The book is interesting and shows an honest concern for clear argumentation. It deserves a wide readership." --Tyler Burge, University of California at Los Angeles"This book is a provocative and relentlessly (...) argued treatment of a deep and important topic: the fate of intentionality. Baker's arguments oblige those who wish to defend the current conception of cognitive science to rethink the discipline. She has put the ball squarely in the physicalists' court. ... Despite the technical character of the topic, the book is wonderfully readable."--John Heil, Visiting Fellow, University of California, BerkeleyThis stimulating book critically examines a wide range of physicalistic conceptions of mind in the works of Jerry A. Fodor, Stephen P. Stich, Paul M. Churchland, Daniel C. Dennett, and others. Part I argues that intentional concepts cannot be reduced to nonintentional (and nonsemantic) concepts; Part II argues that intentional concepts are nevertheless indispensable to our cognitive enterprises and thus need no foundation in physicalism.As a sustained challenge to the prevailing interpretation of cognitive science, this timely book fills a large gap in the philosophical literature. It is sure to spark controversy, yet its clarity makes it attractive as a text in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Saving Belief should be read byphilosophers, psychologists, and others interested in the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Deliberation often begins with the question ‘What do I want to do?’ rather than the question of what one ought to do. This paper takes that question at face value, as a question about which of one’s desires is strongest, which sometimes guides action. The paper aims to explain which properties of a desire make that desire strong, in the sense of ‘strength’ relevant to this deliberative question. Both motivational force and phenomenological intensity seem relevant to a desire’s strength; however, (...) accounting for the strength of a desire in these terms opens up significant indeterminacy about what we want. The paper argues that this indeterminacy is often resolved simply by posing the question ‘What do I want to do?’ to oneself: there is reason to believe that one’s answer will play a verdictive role, partially determining what the agent most wants. Self-reflective beliefs can play a self-fulfilling role, and surprisingly this seems to follow from basic platitudes about the belief-desire model. (shrink)

My aim is twofold: first, to root out the metaphysical assumptions that generate the problem of mental causation and to show that they preclude its solution; second, to dissolve the problem of mental causation by motivating rejection of one of the metaphysical assumptions that give rise to it. There are three features of this metaphysical background picture that are important for our purposes. The first concerns the nature of reality: all reality depends on physical reality, where physical reality consists of (...) a network of events.1 The second concerns the nature of causation, and the third concerns the conception of behavior. I try to vindicate a robust idea of mental causation. (shrink)

Drawing on writers as diverse as Saul Kripke, Stanley Cavell, G. E. M. Anscombe, Jonathan Lear, and Bernard Williams, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein's key notion of a form of life that explains why Wittgenstein was so enigmatic about it. Then, I show how Hilary Putnam's criticism of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics and Richard Rorty's support of (what he takes to be) Wittgenstein's legacy in the philosophy of mind both require mistaken assumptions about Wittgenstein's idea of a form of (...) life. Finally, I consider the extent to which the idea of a form of life is subject to Donald Davidson's critique of the idea of a conceptual scheme. (shrink)

Self-consciousness, many philosophers agree, is essential to being a person. There is not so much agreement, however, about how to understand what self-consciousness is. Philosophers in the field of cognitive science tend to write off self-consciousness as unproblematic. According to such philosophers, the real difficulty for the cognitive scientist is phenomenal consciousness--the fact that we have states that feel a certain way. If we had a grip on phenomenal consciousness, they think, self-consciousness could be easily handled by functionalist models. For (...) example, recently Ned Block commented. (shrink)

relation between, say, a lump of clay and a statue that it makes up, or between a red and white piece of metal and a stop sign, or between a person and her body? Assuming that there is a single relation between members of each of these pairs, is the relation “strict” identity, “contingent” identity or something else?1 Although this question has generated substantial controversy recently,2 I believe that there is philo- sophical gain to be had from thinking through the (...) issues from scratch. Many of the charges and countercharges are based on the following dichotomy: For any x and y that are related as the lump of clay is to the statue that it makes up, either x is identical to y, or x and y are separate entities, independent of each other. By giving up this dichotomy, we will be able to begin to make sense, I hope, of an intermediate unity relation that holds promise for solving a raft of philosophical problems, including the problem of how persons are related to their bodies.3 And if I am correct, then this relation—constitution without identity—is ubiquitous and interesting in its own right, apart from the light that it sheds on human persons. (shrink)

How should philosophy be pursued? I want to defend a conception of philosophy in mediis rebus—philosophy in the middle of things. The more familiar Latin phrase is ‘in medias res,’ but Latin distinguishes two readings of ‘in the middle of things.’ There’s the middle of things from which one starts, and there’s the middle of things into which one jumps. ‘In medias res’ is the middle of things into which one jumps; I, however, mean to invoke the middle of things (...) from which one starts. Thus, risking an accusation of pedantry, I use ‘in mediis rebus.’. (shrink)

The U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the Second Amendment of the Constitution protects an individual's right to bear and keep arms.1 The Court's opinion will stimulate f...

The right to conceive and bear children has been protected both in law and in policy. Human society has from its earliest time valued children and defended procreation as a basic right.Modern health technology offers the possibility of conception to the estimated 2.5 million infertile couples who may wish to have children. For these persons, infertility treatment offers the hope of having children, an activity deemed basic and essential in human society.In general, the state has been reluctant to directly interfere (...) in the reproductive decisions of individuals. However, the state may act to increase or reduce access to reproductive services in a variety of ways. For example, recent legislation regulating fertility clinics affects the distribution of assisted reproductive technology in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to describe this legislation, project its probable effects on the distribution of ART services, and analyze these effects based on distributive theories of justice. (shrink)

Throughout his illustrious career, Roderick Chisholm was concerned with the nature of persons. On his view, persons are what he called ‘entia per se.’ They exist per se, in their own right. I too have developed an account of persons—I call it the ‘Constitution View’—an account that is different in important ways from Chisholm’s. Here, however, I want to focus on a thesis that Chisholm and I agree on: that persons have ontological significance in virtue of being persons. Although I’ll (...) make the notion of ontological significance more precise later, the rough idea is that Fs (persons, or whatever) have ontological significance just in case a new F is a new thing and not just a change in some already-existing thing. (shrink)

This paper seeks to think creatively about the body of research which claims there is a link between heavy metal music and adolescent alienation, self-destructive behaviours, self-harm and suicide. Such research has been criticised, often by people who belong to heavy metal subcultures, as systematically neglecting to explore, in a meaningful manner, the psychosocial benefits for individuals who both listen to contemporary heavy metal music and socialize in associated groups. We argue that notions of survival, strength, community, and rebellion are (...) key themes in contemporary heavy metal music. Through literary-lyrical analysis of a selection of heavy metal tracks, this paper aims to redress the balance of risk and benefit. We argue that listening to this type of music, the accompanying social relationships, sense of solidarity and even the type of dancing can ameliorate tumultuous and difficult emotions. Songs which could be read as negative can induce feelings of relief through the sense that someone else has felt a particular way and recovered enough to transform these emotions into a creative outlet. This genre of music may therefore not increase the risk of untoward outcomes in any simple sense but rather represent a valuable resource for young people in difficulty. (shrink)

We can clarify a certain difficulty with regard to the phrase ‘the best and most perfect virtue’ in Aristotle’s definition of the human good in Nicomachean Ethics I 7 if we make use of two related distinctions: Donnellan’s attributive–referential distinction and Kripke’s distinction between speaker’s reference and semantic reference. I suggest that Aristotle is using the phrase ‘the best and most perfect virtue’ attributively, not referentially, and further that even though the phrase may refer to a specific virtue (semantic reference), (...) Aristotle is not using the phrase to refer to a specific virtue (speaker’s reference). (shrink)

I consider an argument, due to Geoffrey Lee, that we can know a priori from the left-right asymmetrical character of experience that our brains are left-right asymmetrical. Lee's argument assumes a premise he calls relationism, which I show is well-supported by the best philosophical picture of spacetime. I explain why Lee's relationism is compatible with left-right asymmetrical laws. I then show that the conclusion of Lee's argument is not as strong or surprising as he makes it out to be.

The Wnt family of developmental regulators were named after the Drosophila segmentation gene wingless and the murine proto‐oncogene int‐1. Homology between these two genes connected oncogenesis to cell‐cell signals in development. I review how wingless was initially characterized, and cloned, as part of the quest to identify developmental cell‐to‐cell signals, based on predictions of the Positional Information Model, and on the properties of homeotic and segmentation gene mutants. The requirements and cell‐nonautonomy of wingless in patterning multiple embryonic and adult structures (...) solidified its status as a candidate signaling molecule. The physical location of wingless mutations and transcription unit defined the gene and its developmental transcription pattern. When the Drosophila homolog of int‐1 was then isolated, and predicted to encode a secreted proto‐oncogene homolog, it's identity to the wingless gene confirmed that a developmental cell‐cell signal had been identified and connected cancer to development. (shrink)

Anabaptists have long been thought to have been ‘biblicists’ and shunned reading patristic literature. But a close analysis of the debates Anabaptists had with Magisterial Reformers shows that the Anabaptists developed an extensive history of baptism using church fathers. They attempted to show that adult baptism was the norm in the earliest centuries of the church and that infant baptism was the innovation away from the Bible. This debate was about who had inherited the biblical faith around baptism.

The Representational Theory of the Mind (RTM) has been forcefully and subtly developed by Jerry A. Fodor. According to the RTM, psychological states that explain behavior involve tokenings of mental representations. Since the RTM is distinguished from other approaches by its appeal to the meaning or "content" of mental representations, a question immediately arises: by virtue of what does a mental representation express or represent an environmental property like coto or shoe? This question asks for a general account of the (...) semantics of mental representation. Fodor places two conditions on the requisite theory: it must be physi calistic (that is, it must be couched in nonsemantic and nonintentional terms, free of expressions like "refers to" or "denotes" or "means that"), and it must be atomistic (that is, it must allow that the thinker can have a single intentional state without having any others). What is wanted, then, is a reductive theory that "naturalizes" content by specifying sufficient conditions, in physicalistic and atomistic terms, for a mental symbol to represent or express a certain property. (shrink)

Bioethics and human rights were conceived in the aftermath of the Holocaust, when moral outrage reenergized the outmoded concepts of and renaming them and to give them new purpose. Originally, the principles of bioethics were a means for protecting human rights, but through a historical accident, bioethical principles came to be considered as fundamental. In this paper I reflect on the parallel development and accidental divorce of bioethics and human rights to urge their reconciliation.

What is this thing called ‘Commonsense Psychology’? The first matter to settle is what the issue is here. By ‘commonsense psychology,’ I mean primarily the systems of describing, explaining and predicting human thought and action in terms of beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, expectations, intentions and other so-called propositional attitudes. Although commonsense psychology encompasses more than propositional attitudes--e.g., emotions, traits and abilities are also within its purview--belief-desire reasoning forms the core of commonsense psychology. Commonsense psychology is what we use to explain (...) intentional action as ordinarily described--e.g., Jack went to the store because he wanted some ice cream. Commonsense psychology also is used to explain mental states--e.g., Jill feared that she would be late because she thought that the meeting began at 4:00. Commonsense psychology is the province of everyone; we all use it all the time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Evaluation, Standards, Normalization: Historico-philosophical Formations and the Conditions of Possibility for Checklist Thought Bernadette Baker University of Wisconsin-Madison In education today a new vocabulary has emerged that is far more than just words. In the context of educational policy the setting of goals or objectives is now being subsumed under terms such as statewidestandards, child development is now being adjectivized by descriptors such as learning disability or emotionally (...) disturbed, and the evaluation ofclassroom-based performance is now being collated in aportfolio. These are more than just buzz words-at one level they are new ways of governing children and teachers, of organizing action, and of perceiving the world. What, for instance, does it tell us about ourselves when first-grade students Mikey, Enrique, Waldo, orDonal are introduced to visitors to the school by labels such as LD, ED, ADD, ADHD, and so forth, rather thanby their name? What does it tell us about ourselves when we say a curriculum or program of study is in line with the standards established somewhere else? And what story do we think is being narratedin the documentation of a child's performance in portfolio form across a semester or year? In consideringwhyterms suchasstandards, child development, or even evaluation have such contemporary currency I am necessarily drawn into a study of the timespaces in which they did not have such currency at all. This paper maps four moves into a moment that I think of as a rather long present-day-a present that is not simply this morning, yesterday, or the daybefore, but one that links the subjectivities ofthose now living in educational workto those made available about one hundred years ago. The four moves that I analyze here can be thought of as conditions of possibility for the operation of contemporary educational mies of reasoning, especially those that have formed around the resurgent popularity of"checklist thought" in reform efforts. The four moves collectively historicize how notions of standards, child development, and evaluation can pop up as commonsensical tropes through which to gather and degather action in the educational field. The first ofthese moves is that which flows from the operation ofan ideal to the operation of a norm. The second move is that which flows between the advent of statistics and the advent of eugenics. The third move is that which flows between the appearance ofnovels and fiction and the novel ficticityoffacts. And the fourth move is that which flows from the fictions of child development narratives to the stories that standards tell us. Collectively, these historico-philosophical moves will enable reconsideration of what we think evaluation, standards, and norms for child development actually narrate, lending food for thought to the specificityoftheir uptake in music education. From Ideal to Norm One way inwhichto examinethe shift from a seventeenth-century concept of the ideal to the nineteenth-century concept of the norm is by telling a story that was told in the early twentieth century. At this time when the educational field was formalizing, there was great care taken to record discussions held at conferences. When conferenceproceedings werepublished, theywere usually structured so that the presenter's paper©Philosophy ofMusic Education ReviewlO, no. 1 (Fall, 2002): 92-101. Bernadette Baker 93 was followed by a transcript of the conversation held after it. Like today, in the discussion time, audience members asked questions or made comments. Unlike today, the names of such participating audience members were typed into the proceedings and their specific questions or comments were written up as part ofreporting on the paper presented. In a discussion held at a conference in 1 905 on the topic of methods for training children labeledas feebleminded, apresenterhadspokenof the positive uses of a vegetable garden in the disciplining of feebleminded girls. The audience members relayed their own versions of experimenting with gardening and gathering, some complaining oftoo little space and others indicating the effects of having too many fields from which to gather. Dr. Dunlap was one such participant, indicatingimplicitlytheeffectsofhavingtoo many choices. In the spirit ofthe hunter/gatherer dichotomy, thegirlslabeledas feeblemindedatthe institutionwhereDr. Dunlap worked weresentout to pick com. The following story emerged. Dr. Dunlap: Our girls go out under an attendant and gather vegetables... (shrink)

In his Confessions, Augustine lamented, “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not.” In this respect, consciousness is like time. If no one asks me what consciousness is, I know. To pay attention to something is to become conscious of it. Indeed, everything with which I can be familiar ­­ from the sound of your footsteps to my own daydreams ­­ can be an object (...) of my consciousness. Yet, if I wish to explain consciousness to one who asks, I know not. I (and, I suspect, we) have little theoretical grip on the nature of consciousness. Not for nothing did Schopenhauer call the problem of consciousness ‘the world knot.’ What, then, is consciousness? (shrink)

Many physicalists are committed to an austere dichotomy: either beliefs, desires and intentions are scientifically respectable or attributions of such attitudes are all false. One physicalist, Daniel Dennett, offers a third alternative, which seems to permit a kind of instrumentalism concerning attitudes. I argue that Dennett's attempt to reconcile an instrumentalistic account of attributions of attitudes with a thoroughgoing physicalism founders on unresolvable conflicts between his official theory and his actual treatment of key concepts. As a result, instrumentalism concerning attitudes (...) is exposed as inadequate to be a genuine alternative to the physicalist's dichotomy. (shrink)