The Philosophy of Education Society of Australia (PESA) has been immensely proud of owning the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT), which over its 55 years of existence has become one...

Student-centered learning has been conceived as a Western export to the East and the developing world in the last few decades. Philosophers of education often associate student-centered learning with frameworks related to meeting the needs of individual pupils: from Deweyan experiential learning, to the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ and other social justice orientations. Yet student-centered learning has also become, in the era of neoliberal education, a jingoistic advertisement for practices and ideologies which can be seen to lead to a global (...) devaluation of the educational profession, and the bolstering of the view of the student as a customer. In this article, I want to disentangle these views and explore some limitations of either model of student-centered learning. To add context, I consider education in the United Arab Emirates today, which provides an extreme example of the risks involved with prioritizing student’s self-identified needs and interests above all else, as in an idealized or exaggerated student-centered concept. I conclude with brief comments on amending the philosophical concept of student-centered learning to be useful in diverse contexts today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical LifeLiz DisleyRobert B. Pippin. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xi + 308. Paper, $29.99In this work, Pippin offers an interpretation of freedom, rationality, and agency in Hegel’s work and adds substantive content to the key concept of recognition. In doing so, he offers not only a compelling elucidation of a particularly (...) opaque part of Hegel’s analysis of human action and interaction, but also demonstrates the relevance of his practical philosophy to contemporary discussions about free will, intersubjectivity, autonomy, recognition, and liberalism. Pippin provides a substantial defense of Hegel’s position in the context of contemporary political philosophy, arguing against a commonly-held view that Hegelian political philosophy must be much closer to modern communitarian theories than those of classical or modern liberalism. Pippin’s work is central to the recent resurgence of interest in Hegel’s theoretical philosophy by analytical philosophers such as Robert Brandom and John McDowell, as well as the renewed study of recognition in a practical context.Controversially, Pippin claims that Hegel has only one theory of intersubjectivity and recognition from the time of the Jena writings to the Philosophy of Right. The theory develops from an initial stage, where “the desideratum of mutual recognition is posed and explored,” to a realization that ethical life as described in the Philosophy of Right provides the necessary conditions for rational, mutual recognition (184n4). Thus, he rejects the common view in recent Continental Hegel scholarship, asserted by critics including Jürgen Habermas, Michael Theunissen, and Axel Honneth, that Hegel fails to develop adequately the theory of intersubjectivity initially present in his earlier writings and subsumes intersubjectivity into a “grand metaphysical process” of the Absolute Subject’s self-manifestation (184).Pippin defends Hegel from this common charge on the basis of his “very unusual” concept of freedom (185). The key claim here is that Hegel does not set recognition or indeed other-relation as a precondition for any kind of self-relation, but rather, “A true individual [End Page 112] is a free subject and recognition relations function in a complex way as conditions for that possibility” (186). This seems like a promising method of demonstrating that Hegel’s intersubjectivity does not, after all, dissolve in the face of a monological divine conception of reality. The difficulty with the approach, as Pippin concedes, is that it involves making a series of radical, strange, and controversial claims. These claims, in general, focus on the temporal priority of freedom, recognition, and rationality: deeds can count as “mine” in Pippin’s special sense only if they are undertaken rationally, but this state of rationality depends on being in a social state of recognizing and being recognized (190). However, it is neither radical nor strange to make a clear distinction between human interdependence in terms of our particular social psychology and in terms of “an ideal of normative mutuality inherent in any attempt to act” (211).Pippin appreciates that defenders of Hegel’s concept of recognition do not want to say that I cannot be a free subject by myself, but at the same time want to leave the door open for there to be some kind of possibility of ascertaining moral harm in cases of failure to recognize. For Pippin, free actions, and actions committed out of free will, are those committed by agents in a particular social context, namely being situated within norm-governed relations of reciprocal recognition to others. Such an approach fulfills neither of these criteria, since it means I cannot be free by myself but also that, in the case of my being placed in a situation where I am not within these relations of reciprocal recognition to others, there is no obvious originator of moral harm caused by this recognition (218). Pippin accepts that there is no clear answer to this difficulty, but his account of the genesis of norms and social rationality does save Hegel’s account from the objection by Theunissen, Habermas, Honneth et al. mentioned above. Like Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Pippin sees the answer to charges of introducing a... (shrink)

This special issue includes a series of interviews with the past women presidents of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA), including Felicity Haynes, Nesta Devine, Tina Besley, and Liz Jackson. This article sets the stage for reading the interviews, though an extended dialogue between the two authors of this project. In what follows, the authors reflect on insights gleaned from the interviews, and the past and future of women leadership in philosophy of education. Using a dialogical format, (...) it highlights different experiences and similar challenges across generations, questions what has changed versus what has stayed the same over decades, and elaborates on the value of the interviews for readers coming from different academic generations and subject positions. It reflects on the state of the field and its future directions from the perspectives of two women philosophers working and thinking across generations. (shrink)

This special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory considers the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement as an educational event, which has impacted attitudes and outlooks and conceptions of young people’s role, of education, and of society. This essay serves as an introduction to the more substantive pieces that follow. It describes two alternative perspectives on youth civic engagement in Hong Kong historically; and in so doing, it addresses some of the challenges related to free academic expression that hinder scholarly research (...) and publishing on the area of Hong Kong-China relations looking into the future. It concludes with a brief glimpse of the contributions that follow. (shrink)

This special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory considers the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement as an educational event, which has impacted attitudes and outlooks and conceptions of young people’s role, of education, and of society. This essay serves as an introduction to the more substantive pieces that follow. It describes two alternative perspectives on youth civic engagement in Hong Kong historically; and in so doing, it addresses some of the challenges related to free academic expression that hinder scholarly research (...) and publishing on the area of Hong Kong-China relations looking into the future. It concludes with a brief glimpse of the contributions that follow. (shrink)

Concluding remarks for the special issue of Approaching Religion, ‘Appropriation as a Perspective and Topic in the Study of Religion and Spirituality’.

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

Humility is regarded as beneficial for individuals, relationships, and society. It is believed to increase well-being and tolerance of difference and enhance interpersonal relationships. Educating for humility could be regarded as an important element and goal of education as it helps students realise their limitations and consider different (even opposite) perspectives. However, as with other virtues, humility may be conceptualised and expressed differently across diverse cultural communities. Similarly, how to educate for humility may look different in schools around the world. (...) This special issue includes varied explorations of the philosophical and theoretical roots underpinning different conceptions of humility and their implications for education. Taken together, the papers in this issue provide a foundation for understanding the importance of humility across cultural and historical traditions of past and present, particularly those of western and Chinese societies. As such, this special issue can be informative to colleagues in virtue ethics, comparative philosophy, and moral education, as well as others who are interested in understanding contexts and meanings of humility around the world, in society and education today. (shrink)

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)

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 offers a feminist perspective on public sociology that suggests that the potential risks of going public with feminist sociological research are more pervasive and serious than proponents of public sociologies have previously acknowledged. At the same time, the promise of public sociologies for furthering feminist goals has been largely untapped. Here, the authors recount their own experience with widely publicized research that, while neither unique nor typical, serves to highlight potential risks of making feminist sociological research public. Feminist (...) scholars must be made aware of these risks as feminist research, which challenges existing gender inequalities and arrangements, is especially likely to encounter negative public reaction. The authors recommend collective and conscientious attention to both the medium and the message. The perspective on public sociologies presented here can help further the goals of public sociology and holds special promise for feminist sociologists who seek effective ways to promote social change. (shrink)

This article contextualizes some of the more specifically focused articles in this Special Issue of ‘Women and Mental Health’ by reviewing general historical and political currents structuring contemporary discussions around questions of models, treatment and provision for women within British mental health services. We highlight some particularities of the current British context (in relation to other national scenes) in terms of the forms and expressions of feminist activity around mental or emotional distress. While not absolute mirrors of each other, (...) resonances between general trends in feminist debates and organizational forms within feminist mental health work give rise to a wide spectrum of sites of intervention. We discuss some of the conditions that gave rise to these forms of (visible) feminist intervention within mental health service provision, focusing particularly on women's counselling and therapy services, and we offer an analysis of the range and conceptual tensions within which such interventions may be situated, including contested perspectives on power and empowerment. We also consider ways in which women's political activity around mental health issues is likely not to be noticed as such, given women's prototypical positions as patients and practitioners. We end by identifying what we see as current challenges for feminist activism around distress and its links with the conditions of women's lives and oppression more generally, not only as instances of more general tensions and challenges within contemporary feminisms, but also as offering an arena of opportunity for broader alliance and coalition-building. (shrink)

In this Introduction to a special section on ‘Visualizing Surfaces, Surfacing Vision’, the authors argue that to conceive vision in the contemporary world it is necessary to examine its embedding within, expression via and organization on the surface. First, they review recent social and cultural theories to demonstrate how and why an attention to surfaces is salient today. Second, they consider how vision may be understood in terms of surfaces, discussing the emergence of the term ‘surface’, and its transhistorical (...) relationship with vision. Third, they introduce the contributions to the special section, which cover written articles and artworks. They make connections between them, including their exploration of reflexivity and recursion, observation, objectivity and agency, ontology and epistemology, relationality, process, and two- and three-dimensionality. Fourth, the authors consider some implications of an understanding of visualizing surfaces/surfacing vision. (shrink)

[This editorial is part of the 50th celebration issue that explored ‘what comes after postmodernism in educational theory. The special issue is being published as a monograph and this is our group...

In contrast with the development of big theories in the context of social sciences, there is nowadays an increasing interest in the construction of simulation models for complex phenomena. Those simulation models suggest a certain image of social sciences as a kind of, let us say, "patchwork". In that image, an increase in understanding about the phenomena modeled is obtained through a certain sort of aggregation. There is not an application of sound, established theories to all the phenomena of a (...) certain kind, but an aggregation of the structures supposed, and of the results obtained, when particular systems are modeled. The recent case of the "El Farol Bar" problem, and the models built in order to face this problem, are a good example of this. We will analyze that case, trying to make clear what would be implied by the image above mentioned. Special attention will be paid to the need to take seriously the notion of a bounded rationality, linked to the special circumstances generating each decision problem, and to the existence of an irreducible pluralism of models. (shrink)

In contrast with the development of big theories in the context of social sciences, there is nowadays an increasing interest in the construction of simulation models for complex phenomena. Those simulation models suggest a certain image of social sciences as a kind of, let us say, "patchwork". In that image, an increase in understanding about the phenomena modeled is obtained through a certain sort of aggregation. There is not an application of sound, established theories to all the phenomena of a (...) certain kind, but an aggregation of the structures supposed, and of the results obtained, when particular systems are modeled. The recent case of the "El Farol Bar" problem, and the models built in order to face this problem, are a good example of this. We will analyze that case, trying to make clear what would be implied by the image above mentioned. Special attention will be paid to the need to take seriously the notion of a bounded rationality, linked to the special circumstances generating each decision problem, and to the existence of an irreducible pluralism of models. (shrink)

The adoption of Big Data analytics in insurance has proved controversial but there has been little analysis specifying how insurance practices are changing. Is insurance passively subject to the forces of disruptive innovation, moving away from the pooling of risk towards its personalisation or individualisation, and what might that mean in practice? This special theme situates disruptive innovations, particularly the experimental practices of behaviour-based personalisation, in the context of the practice and regulation of contemporary insurance. Our contributors argue that (...) behaviour-based personalisation in insurance has different and broader implications than have yet been appreciated. BDAs are changing how insurance governs risk; how it knows, classifies, manages, prices and sells it, in ways that are more opaque and more extensive than the black boxes of in-car telematics. (shrink)

The Fasti Antiates Ministrorum Domus Augustae, a large inscription associated with the imperial villa at Antium, is best known for its iteration of the Augustan calendar. In this article, I reassess the fasti in their entirety, focusing on their manner of display and social function. I place special emphasis on the section of the inscription, largely overlooked, that contains the annual records of magistrates who led the voluntary association that commissioned the inscription, a detailed record of two decades of (...) local history. The association revealed in these records worked to bestow honors on its members, offering them prestige within and beyond the household, and also acted to censure them. Because the fasti identify most magistrates by job title, they also provide invaluable information about the villa’s workforce, composed of enslaved people and freedmen; the document provides a valuable counterpoint to other testimonia for occupations, largely funerary. Manual laborers and domestics appear with greater frequency in the fasti than they do in occupational inscriptions from funerary contexts, while administrators, abundant in funerary contexts, form a minority. Importantly, the magistrates’ list reveals that the association was a group in which the “sub-clerical grades” of imperial slaves and freedmen could accrue prestige and wield authority as readily as their overseers. In the community reflected in the fasti, power derived not from job status within a workplace hierarchy, but from social standing among peers—acquired and maintained (or lost) over decades of service. (shrink)

Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority society with more than 163 million people. Most Bangladeshis hold the ideals of Islamic norms and values which is manifest in all sorts of socio-cultural behaviour. In reference to such values, the tradition of legitimizing child marriage in Bangladesh is the issue that needs to be addressed in a holistic yet rigorous approach. Currently Bangladesh ranks 4th in the world and 1st in Asia in terms of child marriage. Recently the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929 has (...) been abolished and it has been replaced by the Act of 2017 preserving article 2 of the previous statute, the legal age for marriage for a boy 21 and for a girl 18. This Act adds article 19 which legalizes minors (below 18 years of age) to be married off with the consent of the parents/guardians at the presence of a magistrate under “special circumstances” deemed with securing the best interest for them. The law artfully coincides with the Muslim Marriage Law which allows participants of 15 years and above to get legally married and as such contradicts the international law and the Act of 2017 itself. In the West intimate relationships including extra-marital cohabitation before reaching 18 years of age are culturally accepted. In contrast, such extra-marital and intimate relationships are strictly prohibited in Muslim-majority societies, which are dearly adhered in Bangladeshi Muslim culture. This study examines how the religious cultural and socio-economic realities influence child marriage practice in Bangladesh. Along with secondary documents, we interviewed 22 individuals including the Deputy Commissioner, the District Women and Children Affairs Officer, elected Union Parishad Chairman and Members, Social Workers, married couples and their parents/guardians at Manikganj district. In addition, we also conducted a mass survey with 62 randomly selected participants, and a voluntary online survey where the opinion of another 53 young students were collected to find broad opinion. We also collected stories of how marriages take place at the rural, urban and sub-urban areas in Bangladesh. The study has revealed that Bangladeshis does not support marriage at early ages but socio-economic reality often pushes poor into getting their children married at early ages. Many view that the special provision may encourage child marriage in the country. This study suggests that the government of Bangladesh should redefine public policy in regard to finding a middle ground between Islamic ethics and international values by exploring isomorphic mimicry and other socio-culturally accepted measures with a view to abolishing child marriage successfully. (shrink)

Eric Perrin-Saminadayar The Official Welcomes of Sovereigns and Princes in Athens during the Hellenistic Period p. 351-375 In reporting the official visit made by Attalus I to Athens in 200 BC, Polybius stresses the exceptional welcome the sovereign received on the part of the entire city. He describes a protocol of apantesis in accordance with a model met with elsewhere for other sovereigns. Now at Athens, if a protocol indeed existed regulating the welcome of important persons, this was not uniquely (...) reserved for sovereigns on an official visit: in the Hellenistic period the representatives of the "friends and allies" of the people, as well as of the Romans, were treated in just as sumptuous a manner. The Athenian protocol, which several inscriptions and some literary texts make it possible to reconstruct, envisaged a welcome at Piraeus by the ephebes and magistrates, who escorted the honoured personage to Athens with great pomp: this was the apantesis. Afterwards the visit itself (apodoche) was also regulated and its organisation entrusted to a magistrate specially allocated for the reception. At Athens this consisted of sacrifices in the civic sanctuaries, a public dinner and — an Athenian speciality — an oration before the people. (shrink)

We think and speak in figures. This is key to our creativity. We re-imagine one thing as another, pretend ourself to be another, do one thing in order to achieve another, or say one thing to mean another. This comes easily because of our abilities both to work out meaning in context and re-purpose words. Figures of speech are tools for this re-purposing. Whether we use metaphor, simile, irony, hyperbole, and litotes individually, or as compound figures, the uses are all (...) rooted in literal meanings. These uses invite us to explore the context to find new meanings, new purposes, beyond the literal. -/- This special issue of Philosophical Studies brings together eight papers on various aspects and applications of figurative speech including: David Hills, Mitch Green, Liz Camp, Ofra Magidor, Larry Horn, Ken Walton, Stephen Barker, and Mihaela Popa-Wyatt. (shrink)

The Belgian political system is of ten qualified as a particracy, this is a variation of the classical parliamentary democracy, in which political parties dominate the political decision-making process more than the other subsystems, such as parliament, the government, the public administration, the judiciary power, the broadcasting institutions, the written press etc. This preponderancy is achieved by the partypolitisation of the positions in and the functio ning of these subsystems.Partyleaders exert nowadays a major influence on the constellation of a new (...) government and the designation of its ministers. Through the governmental program and special extraparliamentary pacts they map out more and more government's future policies. The ministerial cabinets execute the control over the public administration on behalf of the parties of the majority and aften take over some of its peculiar functions. The recruitment of public servants and their promotion depend highly upon the institutionalized patronage of the governmental parties.The power to select the candidates for the general elections has shifted away from the rank-and-file member to the local and national partyleaders.Partydiscipline is one of the major causes of the shift of the government making function, the legislative and controlling functions of parliament to the party headquaters.The recruitment and the promotions of magistrates was already before World War II largely politicized.Although the structural integration between the newspapers and parties has decreased since 1945, the political parties have strengthened their control over the designation of the diree:tors and administrators of the Belgian broadcasting institutions. (shrink)

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...

Clinical ethics consultations exist to support patients, families and clinicians who are facing ethical or moral challenges related to patient care. They provide a forum for open communication, where all stakeholders are encouraged to express their concerns and articulate their viewpoints. Ethics consultations can be requested by patients, caregivers or members of a patient’s clinical or supportive team. Althoughpatientsand by extension their families (especially in cases of decisional incapacity) are the common denominators in most ethics consultations, these constituents are theleastlikely (...) to request them. At many healthcare organisations in the USA, ethics consultations are overwhelmingly requested by physicians and other clinicians. We believe it is vital that healthcare institutions bridge the knowledge gaps and power imbalances over access to ethics consultation services through augmented policies, procedures and infrastructure. With enhanced education and support, patients and families may use ethics consultation to elevate their voices and prioritise their unique characteristics and preferences in the delivery of their healthcare. Empowering patients and families to request ethics consultation can only strengthen the patient/family–clinician relationship, enhance the shared decision-making model of care and ultimately lead to improved patient-centred care. (shrink)

The association of colour, sensation and the body, which is noted by Jacqueline Lichtenstein and Merleau-Ponty through their insights on colour as the disturbing of structure and form, offers a way in which to foreground a series of questions about embodiment and the discourse of vision. An analysis of the chromatics of Red Road, which features a female protagonist who works as a surveillance officer in a CCTV control room, offers a way to echo and disrupt the ‘mechanisms and techniques (...) of reality-control’ and to challenge what constitutes socially acceptable bodies and the cinematic institution of the image of woman. In Red Road the legible architecture of the film image emerges through the myriad colours of light reflected by a camera lens and the effacement of details in areas affected by shadow and variations in focus. The camera is almost always in motion and responsive to the gestures of the protagonist's body, signalling the potential of the chromatics of Red Road to trouble the structures of seeing familiar to cinematic representation. Colour and perception remain open to contingency and change, fostering alternative subject positions that trace the interrelations of the body — its senses and sensations — and the discourse of vision. The unsettling of perception refigures the encounter between the self and others through the imaginary or fictional worlds that remind us of the uncertainties and vulnerability of such interactions. (shrink)

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 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)

As Big Data, the Internet of Things and insurance collide, so too, do the best and the worst of our futures. Insurance is summoned as an example of the interference in our private lives that is already underway everywhere. In this paper, we pause to reflect on this argument. Can changes in the way insurance measures the value of behaviour really serve as an example of the individual and social harms of datafication? How do we know? Insurance is a mathematical (...) relationship staged between individuals and groups, between risk and uncertainty, between distribution and assessment, between the value of sharing and the sharing of value. We use the case study of Discovery International, owner of Vitality, the market leading brand in behavioural insurance to consider how behaviour is being branded and how the brand behaves. (shrink)

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)

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

There is a long history in science and technology studies of tracking problematic objects, such as controversies, matters of concern, and issues, using various digital tools. But what happens when public problems do not play out in these familiar ways? In this paper, we will think through the methodological implications of studying “problems” in relation to recent events surrounding the sharing of patient data in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. When a data sharing agreement called care.data was (...) announced in 2013, nearly 1.5 million citizens chose to opt out. Yet, in subsequent years, there has been little evidence of a robust public mobilising around data sharing. We will attempt to track this elusive ‘non problem’ using some digital tools developed in STS for the purpose of mapping issues and problem definitions within science. Although we find these digital tools are unable to capture the “problem,” the process of searching helps us map the terrain of the case and forces us to consider wider definitions. (shrink)

Feminism’s contribution to homiletics so far has arguably been restricted to exploring gender difference in preaching. In 2014, however, Jennifer Copeland identified a need not merely to ‘include women “in the company of preachers” but to craft a new register for the preaching event’. This article considers what that new register might be and how it might be taught in the academy. It defines preaching as ‘the art of engaging the people of God in their shared narrative by creatively and (...) hospitably inviting them into an exploration of biblical text, by means of which, corporately and individually, they might encounter the divine’ and proposes that in both the Church and the Academy, women’s voices are suppressed by a rationalist hegemony. For the stories of women to be heard, a new homiletic is needed, in which would-be preachers first encounter themselves, then the Bible as themselves and finally their congregation in communality. Findings of researchers in practical preaching discover that women preachers are being influenced by feminist methodology, while the teaching of preaching is not. In order to achieve a hospitable preaching space, it is proposed that the Church and the Academy work together towards a new homiletic. (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 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)

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)

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...

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)

A persuasive argument that theism is a Humean “natural belief” relies on the assertion that belief in intelligent design is caused by “Cleanthes’s propensity,” introduced in Hume’s Dialogues—a universal propensity to believe in a designer triggered by the observation of apparent telos in nature. But Hume neverclaims in his own voice that religious belief is founded on anything like Cleanthes’s propensity. Instead, in the Natural History, he argues that the belief in invisible intelligent power is caused by the psychological propensity (...) to anthropomorphize triggered by the observation of disorder. I argue that religious belief is among theHumean natural beliefs only if this propensity is relevantly similar to the propensity responsible for inductive beliefs—the paradigmatic case of natural belief. Evidence from the Natural History and Treatise confirm that this is not the case. I conclude that belief in intelligent design is not, for Hume, a natural belief. (shrink)