Philip Cam argues that we need to rise above Smith's fixation on self-interest in economic affairs.

Given the obvious differences between telling a story and setting out a philosophical theory or a carefully reasoned argument, the philosophical narrative is, on the face of it, an unlikely genre. It is rendered even more problematic when we come to the philosophical narrative for children, with philosophy and children being, in the eyes of tradition, an equally dubious combination. The philosophical novels of Matthew Lipman and others constitute an existence proof that such a genre is possible, of course, but (...) the mere fact that the attempt has been made does not nullify the claim that the form is disfigured or misbegotten. Indeed, without further examination, who is to say that the philosophical narrative for children is not a mongrel as both philosophy and literature, or that it can be called philosophical only by courtesy? In what follows I remark briefly on what makes writing philosophical and then apply those remarks to the philosophical narrative for children in order to explore both the difficulties and allure of the genre. (shrink)

How can materialists begin to do justice to the experiencing subject? Some materialists, whom I call ?structuralists?, believe that the brain sciences offer at least the distant prospect of a materialist psychology with an experiencing subject. Others, and notably those materialists who are functionalists, believe that this faith is misplaced, and offer us instead a functional psychology. I argue, briefly, that functionalism cannot deliver the goods, and go on to elaborate and defend the structuralist claim that consciousness or experience is (...) the formation of content conceived as that laying down of traces commonly assumed to be involved in perception and cognition. (shrink)

The influence of pragmatism—and of Dewey in particular—upon Lipman’s conception of the classroom Community of Inquiry is pervasive. The notion of the Community of Inquiry is directly attributable to Peirce, while Dewey maintained that inquiry should form the backbone of education in a democratic society, conceived of as an inquiring community. I explore the ways in which pragmatic conceptions of truth and meaning are embedded in the Community of Inquiry, as well as looking at its Deweyan moral and social commitments. (...) I show that Peirce’s and Dewey’s notions of truth are in perfect alignment with the philosophical Community of Inquiry, as is Dewey’s tie between meaning and ideas that bring our inquiries to a satisfactory conclusion. The Deweyan notion that moral values are justified by their utility in solving problems in social life is also to be found in the Community of Inquiry, as arguably is his view that moral values are to be regarded as working values that face the tribunal of experience in much the same way as hypotheses in science. Again, the focus in the classroom on open inquiry into issues and problems, the active participation of the students in building upon one another’s ideas, the sense of shared responsibility, and the growth and development of the intellectual and social powers of the individual, all mirror Dewey’s pragmatic conception of democracy. Given this allegiance, it may be argued that the Community of Inquiry faces a pragmatic problem of its own. While it aims to be a philosophically open encounter with all kinds of issues and ideas, pragmatic conceptions are so constitutive of it that they may skew the pitch philosophically. I also address this issue. (shrink)