Felicity Haynes earned Honours degrees in English and French literature from The University of Western Australia and completed her doctorate on reason and understanding at the University of Illinoi...

Liz Jackson is Professor of Education and Head of Department of International Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. Liz served as the President of the Philosophy of Education Society...

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

In this article I describe the development of my collaboration with the textile artist Susie Freeman in the production of the visual arts project Pharmacopoeia. Over the last 3 years we have created a body of work that aims to provide information about common medical treatments in a way that engages the public imagination. The work is dominated by the use of active pharmaceuticals, both pills and capsules, which are incorporated into dramatic fabrics by a process known as pocket knitting. (...) These fabrics are then made into clothing and accessories, making their individual messages easier to ‘read’. The work aims to encourage people to think about their own medical and pharmacological history, and to reflect on their relationship with commonly prescribed drugs. It also reveals how dependent our society is on pharmaceuticals, how ambivalent we feel about them and yet how casually we use them. (shrink)

Professor Flew's vigorous and interesting paper, “The Justification of Punishment,” in PHILOSOPHY for October 1954 discusses my article on Punishment in Mind for April 1939. It merits some rejoinder. Flew's paper ranges far beyond the particular issue of punishment, and much of what is most interesting in it has this wider relevance. I, too, therefore shall use punishment as a peg on which to hang some discussion of the wider problems of ethics.

Discussions on physicalism, reduction, special sciences, the layered image of reality, multiple realizability, emergence, downward causation, and so forth, typically make the ontological presupposition that there is no room for new properties in the physical world. It is my purpose in this paper to explore the alternative hypothesis that there can be—and in fact are—new physical properties. In the first section, I will propose a brief analysis of the notions of property, physical property, and new physical property. In the second (...) section, I will present four general situations in which it would be plausible to speak of the existence of new physical properties. All of that will be used to evaluate the content and scope of the hypothesis of physical novelty. Finally, in the third section, I will examine certain very interesting and promising consequences of such a physical novelty in relation to some of the topics above mentioned. (shrink)

This article shares reflections from members of the community of philosophers of education in the United States and Canada who were invited to express their insights in response to the theme ‘Snaps...

Volume 52, Issue 11, October 2020, Page 1109-1112.

Liz JacksonEducation University of Hong KongNel Noddings is known around the world for her contributions to philosophy and philosophy of education. Her work on caring and relational ethics broke ne...

‘All the difficulties in the theory of forms arise from their separation.’ This recurrent criticism of Aristotle's is, of course, one of the principal obstacles in the way of any reconstruction of the Platonic metaphysic. To begin with, it is flatly denied by Plato himself in the use of such words as μέθεξις, παρoυσία and κoινωνία. It must also be rejected by the orthodox account of the Forms which takes them to be immanent, constitutive principles in the world of everyday (...) life, like a Law of Nature or the Concrete Universal of Hegel. Finally, modern philosophy has made it clear that this view of universals is right and necessary if thought and language are to exist, and it is therefore tempting to attribute it to Plato. (shrink)

Berkeley is commonly regarded as an idealist whose system is saved from subjectivism only by the advent of a God more violently ex machina than the God of any other philosopher. I hope to show that this accusation rests on a misunderstanding of his central theory, a misunderstanding which gives God a place both inconsistent with his main premisses and useless in his system. I hope also to display by quotation the real Berkeley, whose theory of God's place and nature (...) is directly supported by argument and consistent with his premisses, and makes a system which, if it is less than a completely coherent philosophy, is more than an episcopal assumption. (shrink)

Conference environments enable diverse roles for academics. However, conferences are hardly entered into by participants as equals. Academics enter into and experience professional environments differently according to culture, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and more. This paper considers from a philosophical perspective entering and initiating culturally into academic conferences as a woman. It discusses theories of gender and emotional labor and emotional management, focusing on Arlie Hochschild’s foundational work, and affect in gendered social relations, considering Sara Ahmed’s theorization of the feminist (...) killjoy and the affect alien. It applies these lenses to explore problematic experiences of women initiates at conferences. The paper proceeds with a theoretical discussion of gender, emotional labor, and affect. Then the paper discusses women academics’ experiences generally and at conferences, including educational research conferences, with reference to relevant higher education research as well as anecdotal evidence, relating these experiences to the theories. It thus aims to tie together theoretical insights, higher education scholarship, and ordinary real-life experiences of gendered social relations in conference activities. (shrink)

Volume 52, Issue 2, February 2020, Page 120-125.

In this article the author seeks to establish a theoretical framework within which the contemporary concerns about young women’s unhappy and unhealthy relationships with their bodies can be elucidated. Symbolic interactionist theories are considered to explicate the imperative of producing visual identity, and modern interactionist work (Giddens) to consider the consumer capitalist context of this imperative. Post-structural feminist work is interrogated for its robust engagement with the contradictory approaches to the possibility of female agency in relation to ‘doing looks’. The (...) structural tradition is briefly utilized to consider the social position of the young people who increasingly, it is argued, seek identification through appearance. Finally, symbolic interactionist work is returned to for its ability to theorize the intersubjective production and subjective experience of body-hatred. (shrink)

Originally published in 1966, this introduction to moral philosophy examines the philosophical basis of moral problems and considers some of the crucial arguments that attempt to define or dispense with a moral justification of events. Some of the questions discussed are whether moral rules are justified and whether there is any positive evidence that man has free will.

Although ethics instruction has become an accepted part of the business school curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, some scholars have questioned its effectiveness, and research results have been mixed. However, studies yield interesting results regarding certain factors that influence the ethicality of business students and may impact the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. One of these factors is gender. Using personal and business ethics scenarios, we examine the main and interactive effects of gender and business ethics education (...) on moral judgment. We then analyze the relationships between gender and business ethics education on personal ethical perspectives. Our results indicate that women are generally more inclined to act ethically than men, but paradoxically women who have had business ethics instruction are less likely to respond ethically to business situations. In addition, men may be more responsive to business ethics education than women. Finally, women’s personal ethical orientations may become more relativistic after taking a business ethics class. (shrink)

Educating students for emotional wellbeing is a vital task in schools. However, educating emotions is not straightforward. Emotional processes can be challenging to identify and control. How emotions are valued varies across societies, while individuals within societies face different emotional expectations. For example, girls face pressure to be happy and caring, while boys are often encouraged to be brave. This text analyses the best practices of educating emotions. The focus is not just on the psychological benefits of emotional regulation, but (...) also on how calls for educating emotions connect to the aims of society. The book explores psychology's understanding of emotions, 'the politics of emotions', and philosophy. It also discusses education for happiness, compassion, gratitude, resilience, mindfulness, courage, vulnerability, anger, sadness, and fear. (shrink)

Conference environments enable diverse roles for academics. However, conferences are hardly entered into by participants as equals. Academics enter into and experience professional environments differently according to culture, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and more. This paper considers from a philosophical perspective entering and initiating culturally into academic conferences as a woman. It discusses theories of gender and emotional labor and emotional management, focusing on Arlie Hochschild’s foundational work, and affect in gendered social relations, considering Sara Ahmed’s theorization of the feminist (...) killjoy and the affect alien. It applies these lenses to explore problematic experiences of women initiates at conferences. The paper proceeds with a theoretical discussion of gender, emotional labor, and affect. Then the paper discusses women academics’ experiences generally and at conferences, including educational research conferences, with reference to relevant higher education researc... (shrink)

Nesta Devine is Professor at the Auckland University of Technology and served as the third woman President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia from 2009–2011. She completed her ba...

ABSTRACT Patriotism is controversial in moral education across contexts. In China, patriotism is highly politicised by the government and heavily promoted in education. In the last few decades, the moralisation of patriotism, which refers here to the framing of patriotism as a virtue, has become the focus of teaching patriotism in China. This paper demonstrates how patriotism is moralised and promoted in Chinese moral education textbooks. The paper begins by providing a theoretical introduction to patriotism in moral education and defending (...) a rational approach to teaching patriotism given its controversial nature. Then it elaborates on the Chinese context of teaching patriotism and analyses patriotism as part of moral education in Chinese textbooks. Our findings indicate various ways in which patriotism is promoted in Chinese education as a non-controversial virtue and moral duty. Finally, the paper discusses the limitations of this way of teaching patriotism and argues for the adoption of the rational approach as an alternative. (shrink)

Nicholas Gresson 2001L-RUniversity of Auckland, Faculty of Education PhD graduates in 2001:Elizabeth Grierson/Gresson, Tina Besley, Ho-Chia Chueh, Janet Mansfield, Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul, Nesta De...

This study offers a new interpretation of Hegelian recognition – a central tenet of German Idealism – focusing on positive ethical behaviours, such as love and forgiveness. Building on the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Disley reassesses Hegel’s approach to the subject/object dialectic and explores the previously neglected theological dimensions of his writings. Her new interpretation offers an innovative reading of Hegel’s stance on the relationship between intersubjectivity, forgiveness and repentance in his social theory.0.

In a post-feminist, post-lesbian feminist, postmodern or queer world, should lesbian work remain clearly identifiable, even when it refuses to claim lesbian identity as such? Scanning anthologies from the past three decades of lesbian poetry, and focusing particularly on the work of Maureen Duffy, Marge Yeo, Dorothea Smartt, Gillian Spraggs and Carol Ann Duffy, Liz Yorke addresses issues of lesbian visibility, lesbian identification, lesbian desire, and lesbian performativity. How do we identify what constitutes a lesbian poetic in an era when (...) ‘lesbian’ as an identity is less overtly defended, and many anthologies gloss over lesbian difference in prioritizing a higher order dedication to theme? (shrink)

The global #MeToo movement has precipitated a reckoning with gendered, sexual, and other forms of harassment and bullying in higher education. In academia, harassment is rooted in the history of re...

In this paper we address the interrelated questions of why and how certain features of an organism’s environment become meaningful to it. We make the case that knowing the biology is essential to understanding the foundation of meaning-making in organisms. We employ Miguel Nicolelis et al’s seminal research on the mammalian somatosensory system to enrich our own concept of brain-objects as the neurobiological intermediary between the environment and the consequent organismic behavior. In the final section, we explain how brain-objects advance (...) the ongoing discussion of what constitutes a biosemiotic system. In general, this paper acknowledges Marcello Barbieri’s call for biology to make room for meaning, and makes a contribution to that end. (shrink)

The strong continuity thesis postulates that the properties of mind are an enriched version of the properties of life, and thus that life and mind differ in degree and not kind. A philosophical problem for this view is the ostensive discontinuity between humans and other animals in virtue of our use of symbols—particularly the presumption that the symbolic nature of human cognition bears no relation to the basic properties of life. In this paper, we make the case that a genuine (...) account of strong continuity requires the identification of some sort of correlate of symbol-use in basic life properties. Our strategy is three-fold: 1) we argue that examples of proto-symbolism in simple living systems would be consistent with an evolutionary trajectory that ultimately produced symbolic cognition in humans; 2) we introduce Gordon Tomkins’ biological notion of ‘symbol’ as something that represents to the organism a feature of its environment that is significant to its survival; and 3) we employ this biological understanding of symbol-use to suggest that the symbolic nature of human cognition can be understood as an enriched version of the basic symbolic properties of life, thus preserving life-mind continuity in this context. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the meanings of ‘post-AIDS’ in the Global North and South. I bring together contemporary arguments to suggest that the notion of ‘post-AIDS’ is, at best, misplaced, not least because its starting point remains a biotechnical one. Drawing on aspects of the sub-Saharan African experience, this essay suggests that, despite significant shifts in access to antiretroviral therapy, HIV continues to be fundamentally shaped by economic determinants and social and cultural practices. In this essay, I question the certainty (...) of the discourse of ‘positive progress’, which underpins the ‘post-AIDS’ narrative, and suggest that living with HIV and AIDS in our contemporary global context is a life lived with ongoing complexity, stigma and chronicity. I suggest that HIV in the Global North shares many characteristics with HIV in the Global South yet differs in significant ways, not least in the fact that a resource-rich context generates an environment where health and social care support is possible, and, mostly, usual. In both contexts, however, the experience of living with a highly stigmatized illness with no cure in both the Global South and North suggests that this is a point of shared experience. (shrink)

Felicity Haynes earned Honours degrees in English and French literature from The University of Western Australia and completed her doctorate on reason and understanding at the University of Illinoi...

The ethic of care provides not only a basis for understanding relationships of care at the micro level but also a potent form of political ethics, relevant to the development of welfare services. Williams (2001), for example, argues that the concept of care has the capacity to be a central referent in social policy?a point at which social and cultural transformations meet with the changing relations of welfare (Williams 2001, p. 470). English social care services are currently in another period (...) of change precipitated by the ?personalisation agenda?. This agenda is seen as having the potential to revolutionise social care, to create the conditions needed to tailor services to individual needs, and to give service users greater choice and control, including, where possible, control over their own service budgets or direct possession and management of care funds. These developments are inextricably linked to broader economic and social trends, key amongst which are the ageing of the population and changing economic conditions affecting both the labour market and the market for care services. This article applies the feminist ethic of care to an analysis of the personalisation agenda in the context of care for dependent older people. It highlights fundamental political questions posed concerning the nature and extent of older people's need for care, responsibility for meeting these needs and the associated costs. It questions whether the personalisation agenda could potentially offer a more responsive form of care, by placing more power and control in older people's hands. Key points considered are the individualisation of care and the ways in which control is conceptualised. The article concludes with an assessment of the feminist ethic of care as a basis for policy evaluation. (shrink)

Academic freedom is often regarded as an absolute value of higher education institutions. Traditionally, its value is related to such topics as tenure, and the need for academic work to be free from undue political influence and other pressures that can challenge time-consuming research processes. However, when an analysis of student freedom begins with arguments about free research and free speech, undergirded as they generally are by liberal political philosophy, other considerations, related to broader views of freedom, can slip through (...) the cracks. In this essay, I want to take a step back from typical discussions of academic freedom, to take a broader perspective, before considering how freedom relates to student experience. The first part of this essay explores diverse elaborations and defences of freedom: How it is upheld in the liberal philosophy of Kant, the critical pedagogy of Freire, existentialism, and the capabilities approach to development. Exploring the often contrasting insights and implications of these views, I then connect relevant theoretical understandings derived from them to an exploration of the experience of freedom and of students. This essay thus considers how student freedom, and student academic freedom, are more precarious concepts than typically assumed. (shrink)