The author proves the crucial role of the reform of philosophical education in the context of the socio-economic crisis. Without this reform, it is impossible to form a new mentality. Respectively, without changing the mentality, other reforms are not possible. Criticizing the Soviet command-and-control system, the author argues that its system remains in the very structure of Ukrainian universities. The reform of philosophical education, according to the author, should lie (1) in the democratization of the educational process and (2) in (...) reorienting this process to develop the ability to philosophize. This goal assumes that the basis of philosophical education should be such disciplines as the history of philosophy and the argumentation theory because they provide an understanding of philosophical problems and teach how to think critically and creatively. (shrink)

'Sure in the independence, confident of the future of Britain, the Daily Express is rooted in the hearts of the people. It is Britain's greatest newspaper.' Daily Express 31 December 1960 -/- Discuss the possible criteria for this claim. -/- With this kind of homely exercise the reader of this entertaining Pelican is encouraged to practise the strokes of philosophy… The author initiates the beginner into the world of ideas and words with an examination of the use of language, and (...) in subsequent chapters deals with the handling of concepts, considers the fundamental step of asking the right question, and examines the nature of value judgements. It is only in the last two chapters that the reader is very gently led up to the brink of more difficult problems in the discussions of Appearance and Reality and of Free Will and Determinism. -/- In short, [this book] with its lively selection of quotations from very varied sources, provides a 'think-it-yourself handbook' for the application of logic and philosophy in daily life. -/- Publisher's Blurb . (shrink)

"Philosophy for Children" has preponderantly started from the assumption that there is no fundamental difference between the thinking of adults and the thinking of children: both make use of the same mental operations. Moreover, children seem to be interested in the same basic questions about life and its meaning as adults. So children and adults apparently perform the same activities when they join in philosophical discussions. It is also easily assumed that children are particularly apt to philosophical thinking, because they (...) are inquisitive, unconventional and - contrary to traditional educational opinion - rational, often even more so than adults. (shrink)

Philosophical thinking, as it is thinking of existence, is essentially finite thinking. This is to say that as thinking of existence, philosophical thinking is essentially also thinking of finitude. This ‘also' is not the accidental relationship between existence and finitude. Rather, to think existence in its finitude, insofar as existence is finite, is to think existence in its existentiality. Philosophy that gives itself the task of thinking the relationship between existence and finitude, must in the same gesture, be concerned with (...) its own finitude: to philosophize is not only to think the finitude of existence, but the very finitude of thinking that thinks finite existence. To philosophize is not only to philosophize the finitude of existence as such, but also in so far as philosophising itself is a task which is essentially in itself finite. To assume as the task of thinking the finitude of existence is to think the very finitude of philosophical thinking: this is the profound relationship that exists between existence and philosophy, which is that philosophizing existence and an existential philosophy are essentially finite. This is perhaps what Socrates says of philosophizing: ‘to philosophize is to learn how to die.' "To philosophize is to learn how to die": this is to say, to philosophize is to learn that philosophy and existence are essentially finite. Philosophy and existence belong to finitude and gifts of finitude; therefore to philosophize is to learn how existence is this gift. To be able to learn how existence is this gift of finitude, to be able to assume this gift that makes existence essentially finite, which is to be able to assume existence at all, is to be able to die.' Learning to die' then comes to signify the ability of dying, which is in the same gesture, the ability of existing: existence, and dying at the end must be this ability, of existing and dying. Philosophizing must provide, then, the learning of this ability: to be capable of death and existence. To be capable of death is to master it, to be equal to it, to surpass or transcend it and to be immortal. There seems to be a paradox here which we must bring to thought. If to philosophize is to learn how to die, to be equal to or master death, it thereby means to be immortal, to be able not to die, to be capable of immortality; by learning to die, by learning to be capable of death, we become capable of not-dying, or of immortality. To learn to die is to learn how not to die. (shrink)

Paul Crittenden sets out to recover the past philosophical practice of treating developmental questions as an important part of ethical inquiry and to bring moral development, moral education, and moral philosophy back together again. The first part of this extremely thorough work is concerned with the main contemporary accounts of how children come to be moral beings. Against this background, the second part consists of historical studies of major accounts of morality in a developmental context. Crittenden stresses the necessity of (...) community for moral development and also address a number of conceptual questions, including the relationship between morality and religion. (shrink)

This study explored the impact of facilitating collaborative philosophical inquiry, in the tradition of “Philosophy for Children,” on connectedness pedagogies. The study employed an experimental design that included 59 primary teachers in 2 groups. The experimental group received an intervention that comprised training in CPI and the comparison group received training in Thinking Tools, a subset of the CPI training. Lessons were coded on four variables of connectedness pedagogies, across the two groups, at three time-points. Teacher interviews were conducted to (...) gather participants’ perspectives. Between-groups analysis of variance on particular measures of pedagogy revealed that CPI significantly broadened teachers’ pedagogical repertoires, in ways that included drawing on students’ background knowledge and preparing a problem-based curriculum which connects students to the world beyond the classroom. (shrink)

pt. 1. Toward a theory of liberal education. Mixed messages and false starts -- Liberal education and human flourishing -- pt. 2. Paradigms of liberal education. Transmission of culture -- Self-actualization -- Understanding the world -- Engagement with the world -- The skills of learning -- pt. 3. The values and moral aims of liberal education. Core values of liberal education -- Intrinsic value -- Educating a good person -- pt. 4. Obstacles, threats and prospects. Persistent concerns -- Newfound (...) threats -- Promise and prospects. (shrink)

Prospective preschool teachers often incorporate picturebooks into their teaching practices in kindergartens as part of their training. However, they often rely heavily on asking children numerous questions while reading picturebooks, such as identifying the protagonists of the story, detailing the sequence of events, and exploring the who, what, when, where, and why. This approach may result in a superficial interrogation of the text, overlooking (i) the nuanced messages conveyed through illustrations or the synergy of text and imagery, and (ii) the (...) potential opportunities that could arise if children were encouraged to pose their own inquiries through philosophical exploration, delving deeper into the themes presented in picturebooks. This research was conducted in 2023 with 36 prospective preschool teachers from the University of Crete, Greece. The research comprises two phases. In the initial phase, the student teachers established a philosophical community of inquiry and acquired several philosophical inquiry skills. Following each inquiry session, student teachers engaged in self-reflection and assessed their contributions, identifying aspects of their experience that are applicable to using picturebooks with kindergarten children. They then developed lesson plans centred around the philosophical exploration of these picturebooks. In the subsequent phase, student teachers received supervision as they implemented their lesson plans in a kindergarten and subsequently reflected on their teaching experiences. The findings illustrate both the advantages and challenges encountered by prospective preschool teachers when approaching literature from a philosophical perspective. Additionally, the student teachers reflected on the interconnectedness of literature and philosophy, as well as the potential benefits for both educators and children through this integrated approach. A correction to this article was published on 22 January 2025. (shrink)

In response to increasing calls to realize more potential from diversity in organizations, Frances Hesselbein, CEO of Peter Drucker Leadership Institute, challenged management scholars to enrich the understanding of diversity. Her challenge contains descriptive and normative elements, and extends beyond learning only "about" others, toward "diversifying oneself." With this purpose in mind, this two-stage study develops a framework of divergent learning. The first stage describes a philosophical foundation grounded in literature that orients its key concepts toward divergent (...) class='Hi'>learning. The second stage adds a layer of practical insights, gathered from professionals in eight different fields, providing channels of access and application within organizational contexts. (shrink)

Imagine that you find yourself in a situation of considerable adversity and apparent permanence. Does it make sense for me to advise you to learn to love your situation? I argue that such advice is capable of a robust meaning beyond the mere expression of compassion, and far beyond the pragmatic advice to ‘accept it’ or ‘make the best of it’. I respond to the objections that love cannot be commanded, and that I am counselling pernicious forms of self-deception or (...) self-deprecation. The key, I suggest, is to understand what it means to lead a life ‘from the inside’. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Two‐Wheeled Sensations The “Bicycling Method” Lessons from the Saddle Finding the Words Notes.

In two of their major works, Hegel and Kierkegaard seek philosophical instruction in the very same example: that of trying to learn to swim before one has entered the water. But they reach diametrically opposed conclusions about what this example shows. It might seem troubling that an example can teach two incompatible lessons. I argue that we will be troubled only if we make an implausible assumption about examples: that the lessons they teach are theory-neutral facts equally available to all. (...) Drawing on work by Onora O’Neill, I argue against this assumption. I try to show that philosophical examples can be quite mysterious: both free and rule-governed, both determinate and indeterminate—or, better, determinately indeterminate. In this respect, they may be fruitfully compared to Kantian judgments of taste. (shrink)

This discussion applies a “scholarship of teaching and learning” (SOTL) perspective with regard to the authors’ introduction of “learning or wisdom circles” inbusiness ethics and business & society courses. Building upon the use of wisdom circles conducted at the 2005 and 2006 International Association of Business and Society (IABS) meetings and descriptions of “circles of trust” or learning circles for college classes found in several academic disciplines, we have set aside significant class time during academic semesters for (...) undergraduate students to participate in these circles or trust-based dialogues. We provide a pedagogical and philosophical rationale for an “inside-out” approach to teaching ethics from the heart, followed by an overview of one of the authors’ planning, implementation, and assessment of student learning circles. In the spirit of SOTL, we seek feedback from peers concerning the perceived effectivenessof these teaching methods as part of a more comprehensive learning strategy for ethicsrelated business courses. (shrink)

Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi —a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the curricula of (...) private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Chu Hsi was convinced that through education anyone could learn to be fully moral and thus travel the road to sagehood. Throughout his life, he struggled with the philosophical questions underlying education: What should people learn? How should they go about learning? What enables them to learn? What are the aims and the effects of learning? Part One of _Learning to Be a Sage_ examines Chu Hsi's views on learning and how he arrived at them. Part Two presents a translation of the chapters devoted to learning in the _Conversations of Master Chu_. (shrink)

Although seventeenth‐century societies fell far short of contemporary standards of justice, early modern philosophers thought deeply about what social justice consists in. At a theoretical level, they aimed to articulate distributive principles. At a practical level, they asked what qualities we need to possess in order to make just judgments. In the first part of this article, I discuss two interpretations of the conception of equity on which justice was held to rest. On either interpretation, I suggest, treating people equitably (...) was held to be compatible with treating them in ways that we would consider radically unjust. This raises the practical question: What qualities was an equitable or just judge thought to need? The middle section of the article sketches a reply, drawing on a genre of early modern works about how to reason. As this section reveals, early modern thinkers were alive to the many ways in which we can fall short of justice and possessed many techniques for self‐improvement. Greater justice was not beyond the bounds of their imaginations; so, what prevented them from defending it? In the final section of the article, I propose a partial answer, as relevant to us as to our early modern forebears. (shrink)

Macmurray’s distinctive portrayal of personhood has much to contribute to more recent accounts of what it means to be human. Michael Fielding, for one, has devoted much of his career to promoting and advocating a Macmurrian-style of schooling both as a critique of and a corrective to the performance-driven form of state education that is prevalent in the UK. Further, while I agree with Fielding and others that Macmurray’s concept of the person is of importance for education, I also hold (...) that it contains significant social and political implications for a religiously plural era. In addition, Macmurray’s emphasis on our inherent relationality provides a philosophical grounding for what is coming to be known as ‘postliberalism’. (shrink)

Underlying much current work in philosophy of imagination is the assumption that imagination is a skill. This assumption seems to entail not only that facility with imagining will vary from one person to another, but also that people can improve their own imaginative capacities and learn to be better imaginers. This paper takes up this issue. After showing why this is properly understood as a philosophical question, I discuss what it means to say that one imagining is better than another (...) and then discuss the kinds of imagination training and techniques that might be employed in an effort to get better at imagining. The discussion of these techniques draws insight from consideration of other skills-based activities, as well as from consideration of the creation of art and our engagement with literature and poetry. Over the course of this discussion, we also gain further insight into the nature of imagination. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the applicaation of the notions of tacit knowing and embodied interaction to the college classroom. Topics ranging from classroom arrangement and discussion techniques, through curriculum and textbook choices, to attitudes and values are address.

This book provides a framework for thinking about foundational philosophical questions surrounding machine learning as an approach to artificial intelligence. Specifically, it links recent breakthroughs in deep learning to classical empiricist philosophy of mind. In recent assessments of deep learning's current capabilities and future potential, prominent scientists have cited historical figures from the perennial philosophical debate between nativism and empiricism, which primarily concerns the origins of abstract knowledge. These empiricists were generally faculty psychologists; that is, they argued (...) that the active engagement of general psychological faculties-such as perception, memory, imagination, attention, and empathy-enables rational agents to extract abstract knowledge from sensory experience. This book explains a number of recent attempts to model roles attributed to these faculties in deep neural network based artificial agents by appeal to the faculty psychology of philosophers such as Aristotle, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), John Locke David Hume, William James, and Sophie de Grouchy. It illustrates the utility of this interdisciplinary connection by showing how it can provide benefits to both philosophy and computer science: computer scientists can continue to mine the history of philosophy for ideas and aspirational targets to hit on the way to more robustly rational artificial agents, and philosophers can see how some of the historical empiricists' most ambitious speculations can be realized in specific computational systems. (shrink)

Patrick Frierson - Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 313-338 Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes Patrick R. Frierson The whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics, (...) and morals. Descartes is well known for his metaphysics and physics, the roots and trunk of his philosophical project. But Descartes's morals are generally neglected, partly because they are so difficult to find. He does not dedicate a major published work to morality. His most direct comments on it are in letters to Princess Elizabeth and Pierre Chanut. The published work that most touches on moral issues is The Passions of the Soul, which is primarily a treatise on the relationship between mind and body. As a result of this lack of primary sources , there have been only a few significant studies of Descartes's moral philosophy in French, and only two major works devoted to it in English. This neglect of Descartes's ethics is unfortunate, not least since ethical concerns sometimes influence his work in other areas. This.. (shrink)

Introduction by Jean Birnbaum -- The last interview -- Notes -- Translators' note -- Selected bibliography by Peter Krapp.

Philosophising, as Spinoza conceives it, is the project of learning to live joyfully. This in turn is a matter of learning to live together, and the most obvious test of philosophical insight is our capacity to sustain a harmonious way of life. Susan James defends this interpretation and explores Spinoza's influence on contemporary debates.

Since the advent of the internet, researchers have been interested in the intersubjective possibilities and constraints that digital environments offer users. In the literature, we find some who argue that seemingly disembodied digitally mediated interactions are severely limited when compared to their embodied face-to-face counterparts and others who are more optimistic about the possibilities that such technologies afford. Yet, both camps tend towards offering what we see as static accounts of online intersubjectivity – accounts that attempt to determine the very (...) possibilities and constraints of digital platforms based upon their design. What we think these approaches fail to take into account is how users’ intersubjective capabilities on digital platforms can evolve and change over time. Developmental psychology emphasises the way in which intersubjective capabilities build upon and are interrelated to one another, allowing for more sophisticated styles of intersubjectivity to emerge only once earlier stages are already in place. We find this suggestive for analysing intersubjectivity online as it provides a framework for thinking about how various an individual’s intersubjective capabilities might develop. We argue that in some cases this can happen through gradual adjustments of our basic intersubjective capabilities to digital spaces, especially those that strive to mimic established forms of offline interaction (e.g., Zoom). In other cases, this can involve more substantial processes of learning to walk and talk again online. Consequently, determining the possibilities and limits of online intersubjectivity is, at least in part, relative to a user’s skill, history, and familiarity with the technology in question. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine how Plato’s Symposium can be helpful for teachers who are interested in encouraging introductory students to develop a sense of wonder in their early encounters with philosophical texts. Plato’s work is helpful, I argue, in two ways. First, as teachers of philosophy, the Symposium contains important pedagogical lessons for us about the roles of creativity and affectivity in philosophical pedagogy. Second, the dialogue lends itself well to the pedagogical methods that Plato’s work recommends. That is, (...) the Symposium invites students to engage with it in ways that involve them as affective and creative learners. I begin by providing the theoretical basis for my pedagogical approach, which is inspired by phenomenology. Next, I offer my interpretation of the Symposium, indicating what we can learn from the text about how to teach philosophy. And finally, I describe three classroom activities based on Plato’s text that are aimed at accomplishing the pedagogical ends I have outlined. (shrink)

Research has indicated that dialogic approaches have desirable effects in education, but it is also well-known that it can be a challenge for teachers to make the transition from the traditional teacher role to that of the facilitator. Based on a case study, this article investigates the successes and shortcomings of 29 teachers learning to facilitate classroom dialogue in teacher development programmes. The article analyses the trainees’ written selfevaluations and the supervisors’ feedback to examine the extent and nature of (...) the challenges encountered as well as the teachers’ self-perceptions compared to the perceptions of the trained supervisors. The main findings were that the teachers encountered many challenges, especially when it came to adopting the role of a facilitator and supporting the students’ reasoning and interaction. In addition, their own assessments of their performances were generally unreliable. Nonetheless, with supervised training, the teachers were successful in learning to facilitate philosophical dialogues. (shrink)

Abstract:With these reflections, I will address some selected features of philosophical thinking and elucidate how they may relate to classical music. Is there a relationship between the experience gained from philosophical thinking and the experience gained from listening to classical music? If there is a kinship between the two, it may show some of the importance of incorporating classical music in music education. This article is a philosophical essay that does not try to prove a kinship between philosophical thinking and (...) classical music; it is rather the result of a free-thinking process grounded in my experience in both fields. Subjective involvement is a necessary presupposition for being able to say something about the postulated kinship between classical music and philosophical thinking. The essay ends with a suggestion on how to understand what kind of knowledge this potential kinship may represent. (shrink)

Thinking should be taught in every class, but only children’s philosophy workshops allow learning and the practice of correct thinking without linking them to the acquisition of some other mandatory learning. The reading of stories with veiled philosophical content is one way to conduct philosophical workshops for children. We may give children stories that contain some laws of correct logical reasoning. However, in order to achieve this aim, we must extract the content from the symbolic logic and translate (...) it into everyday language. We must choose areas where the thought process is of interest for children, such as that found in logical games. This method was used by Lewis Carroll in his book The Game of Logic. We attempt to develop further his idea by suggesting games which are used by children in their everyday life. (shrink)

Deep learning is currently the most prominent and widely successful method in artificial intelligence. Despite having played an active role in earlier artificial intelligence and neural network research, philosophers have been largely silent on this technology so far. This is remarkable, given that deep learning neural networks have blown past predicted upper limits on artificial intelligence performance—recognizing complex objects in natural photographs and defeating world champions in strategy games as complex as Go and chess—yet there remains no universally (...) accepted explanation as to why they work so well. This article provides an introduction to these networks as well as an opinionated guidebook on the philosophical significance of their structure and achievements. It argues that deep learning neural networks differ importantly in their structure and mathematical properties from the shallower neural networks that were the subject of so much philosophical reflection in the 1980s and 1990s. The article then explores several different explanations for their success and ends by proposing three areas of inquiry that would benefit from future engagement by philosophers of mind and science. (shrink)

Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi —a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the curricula of (...) private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Chu Hsi was convinced that through education anyone could learn to be fully moral and thus travel the road to sagehood. Throughout his life, he struggled with the philosophical questions underlying education: What should people learn? How should they go about learning? What enables them to learn? What are the aims and the effects of learning? Part One of _Learning to Be a Sage_ examines Chu Hsi's views on learning and how he arrived at them. Part Two presents a translation of the chapters devoted to learning in the _Conversations of Master Chu_. (shrink)

This essay responds to recent philosophical interest in the Anthropocene by asking : Can and should educators adopt, form, transmit, teach ways of living to maintain, if not enhance Earth’s habitability, especially its habitability for diverse children? This inquiry therefore calls for conceptual study of learning to live through the Anthropocene—with, despite, after, before, amid, among, away from, and against its myriad harms, possible and actual, especially its harms to children. Examining cases of environmental racism in Checker’s Polluted Promises, (...) and other cases of environmental threats to children’s health, in Steingraber’s Raising Elijah, this study begins by proposing the ecological gap in philosophy of education consequential for children resides within another epistemological gap, variously designated gender gap, love gap, care gap. Ruddick’s maternal thinking provides a conceptual frame for theorizing three moral aims of learning to live in the Anthropocene that might inform public schooling. (shrink)

Francis Bacon’s elusive notion of experience can be better understood when we relate it to his views on matter, motion, appetite and intellect, and bring to the fore its broader philosophical implications. Bacon’s theory of knowledge is embedded in a programme of disciplinary redefinition, outlined in the Advancement of Learning and De augmentis scientiarum. Among all disciplines, prima philosophia plays a key foundational role, based on the idea of both a physical parallelism between the human intellect and nature and (...) a theological parallelism between nature and God. Failure to assess Bacon’s distinctive position concerning the way in which the mind mirrors both the natural and the divine world, that is to say, the meaning of “reality,” has resulted in notoriously jejune discussions on Baconian empiricism, monotonously driven by epistemological concerns. As a result, the standard view on Bacon’s empiricism is as epistemologically comforting as it is imaginary, an “idol” in a genuinely Baconian sense. In this article, Bacon’s notion of experience will be discussed by examining those steps that he considered to be the crucial initial stages in the formation of human experience, stages described as a process of experiential literacy or, in emblematic terms, as a hunting expedition led by the mythological figure of Pan. I argue that a well-rounded analysis of Bacon’s experientia literata needs to take into account the complementary notion of the “spelling-book of nature”, that is, the original code of the primordial motions of matter. By getting acquainted with the first rudiments of experience through its spelling-book, one learns to read the book of nature and, most of all, to write new pages in it. (shrink)

This book presents a novel interpretation of Aristotle's account of how shame instils virtue, and defends its philosophical import. Shame is shown to provide motivational continuity between the actions of the learners and the virtuous dispositions that they will eventually acquire.

What might Adam Smith have learned from Jane Austen and other novelists of his moment? This paper finds and examines a serious problem at the center of Adam Smith’s moral psychology, stemming from an unacknowledged tension between the effort of the spectator to sympathize with the feelings of the agent and that of the agent to moderate her feelings. The agent’s efforts will result in her opacity to spectators, blocking their attempts to read her emotions. I argue that we can (...) resolve this tension by looking to developments in eighteenth-century literature, as perfected in the hands of Jane Austen. I focus on two techniques, focalization and free indirect style, and I show that the problems for spectatorship diminish when we see that good Smithian spectators are savvy readers. (shrink)

James Cameron’s critically acclaimed movie Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards and received countless accolades for its breath-taking visuals and use of 3D technology. But beyond its cinematic splendour, can Avatar also offer us insights into business ethics, empathy, disability, and the relationship between mind and body? Can getting to know the Na’vi, an alien species, enlarge our vision and help us to “see” both our world and ourselves in new ways? Avatar and Philosophy is a revealing journey through (...) the world of Pandora and the huge range of philosophical themes raised by James Cameron’s groundbreaking film Explores philosophical issues such as religion, morality, aesthetics, empathy, identity, the relationship of mind and body, environmental and business ethics, technology, and just war theory Examines a wide range of topics from the blockbuster movie, including attitudes toward nature, our responsibilities to nonhuman species, colonialism, disability, and communitarian ethics Written by an esteemed group of philosophers who are avid fans of Avatar themselves Explains philosophical concepts in an enjoyable and accessible manner that will appeal to all levels of readers With a new trilogy of sequels now announced, this is the ideal entry point for understanding the world of Pandora for fans and newcomers alike. (shrink)

Computational complexity is a discipline of computer science and mathematics which classifies computational problems depending on their inherent difficulty, i.e. categorizes algorithms according to their performance, and relates these classes to each other. P problems are a class of computational problems that can be solved in polynomial time using a deterministic Turing machine while solutions to NP problems can be verified in polynomial time, but we still do not know whether they can be solved in polynomial time as well. A (...) solution for the so-called NP-complete problems will also be a solution for any other such problems. Its artificial-intelligence analogue is the class of AI-complete problems, for which a complete mathematical formalization still does not exist. In this chapter we will focus on analysing computational classes to better understand possible formalizations of AI-complete problems, and to see whether a universal algorithm, such as a Turing test, could exist for all AI-complete problems. In order to better observe how modern computer science tries to deal with computational complexity issues, we present several different deep-learning strategies involving optimization methods to see that the inability to exactly solve a problem from a higher order computational class does not mean there is not a satisfactory solution using state-of-the-art machine-learning techniques. Such methods are compared to philosophical issues and psychological research regarding human abilities of solving analogous NP-complete problems, to fortify the claim that we do not need to have an exact and correct way of solving AI-complete problems to nevertheless possibly achieve the notion of strong AI. (shrink)

Empathy is a necessity in our multicultural world. Modern democratic societies are home to communities with the most diverse religious, political, and moral convictions, and these convictions often directly, even perilously, contradict one another. Educational theorists differ on how empathy can be taught in the face of these contradictions. Does proper pedagogical action entail an attempt to teach students to understand the other, to see their world through the eyes of the other? Or is such an attempt doomed to fail, (...) a vain and presumptuous striving to surpass the epistemologically preordained limits of subjectivity? While theorists who promote mutual understanding traditionally look to some form of dialogue to establish their empathic pedagogies, those who doubt the possibility of mutual understanding formulate critical, often monological pedagogies in which students are encouraged to “talk back” to their others about their idiosyncratic perspectives. Theorists have thus had choose: dialogue or relativism? Using the robust educational philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Douglas Yacek demonstrates that this is a most unsatisfactory choice, one that ignores the pedagogical complexity needed to teach students genuine empathy. He argues that Nietzsche's educational writings yield a tripartite empathic pedagogy founded on self-knowledge, foreign language learning, and experimentalism. Upon these three pedagogical pillars, Yacek problematizes Megan Laverty's recent attempt to formulate an empathic pedagogy as dialogical philosophical inquiry. Although Nietzsche would endorse much of Laverty's pedagogy, Yacek concludes that Nietzsche's pedagogy requires engagement with perspectives across the democratic curriculum and, indeed, beyond. (shrink)

This article reports research in three Nottingham schools, concerned with (1) 'The school as fertile ground: how the ethos of a school enables everyone in it to benefit from the presence of artists in class'; (2) 'Children on the edge: how the arts reach those children who otherwise exclude themselves from class activities, for any reason' and (3) 'Children's voices and choices: how even very young children can learn to express their wishes, and then have them realised through arts projects'. (...) The research methodology was rooted in two modes of inquiry, philosophical investigation and action research. The article draws on this research to argue that arts-based work in school has helped disadvantaged and/or disaffected children to engage in activities (both arts-based and others), and to be able to lay the groundwork for exercising voice and agency as they did so. If social justice is to flourish there is a need for particular kinds of public spaces and a need to create conditions such that children can learn to participate in those spaces, whether or not they are comfortable with the usual settings for 'rational argument' or 'deliberative democracy'. It is suggested that arts-based education, in some forms, is one good way of creating these conditions. (shrink)

Philosophy is often regarded as a difficult subject, above the reach of ordinary men and set aside for a selected few intellectuals. Emmet says that "this is unfortunate and that philosophical matters are often less difficult and more important than is generally supposed." So he tries to introduce the reader gently to the activity of philosophising. The first four chapters discuss the basic principles connected with handling words and ideas. The nature of value judgments is analyzed in the fifth chapter. (...) The last two chapters deal with the rather difficult problems of "Appearance and Reality" and "Free Will and Determinism." In order to arouse the interest of the readers in the practice of philosophical activity, the author has furnished each chapter with exercises, adding his own comments at the end of the book.—J. K. (shrink)

The emerging contemporary natural philosophy provides a common ground for the integrative view of the natural, the artificial, and the human-social knowledge and practices. Learning process is central for acquiring, maintaining, and managing knowledge, both theoretical and practical. This paper explores the relationships between the present advances in understanding of learning in the sciences of the artificial (deep learning, robotics), natural sciences (neuroscience, cognitive science, biology), and philosophy (philosophy of computing, philosophy of mind, natural philosophy). The question (...) is, what at this stage of the development the inspiration from nature, specifically its computational models such as info-computation through morphological computing, can contribute to machine learning and artificial intelligence, and how much on the other hand models and experiments in machine learning and robotics can motivate, justify, and inform research in computational cognitive science, neurosciences, and computing nature. We propose that one contribution can be understanding of the mechanisms of ‘learning to learn’, as a step towards deep learning with symbolic layer of computation/information processing in a framework linking connectionism with symbolism. As all natural systems possessing intelligence are cognitive systems, we describe the evolutionary arguments for the necessity of learning to learn for a system to reach humanlevel intelligence through evolution and development. The paper thus presents a contribution to the epistemology of the contemporary philosophy of nature. (shrink)

The Scientific Realism Debate (SRD) has been accused of going around in circles without reaching a consensus, so that several scholars have advocated its dissolution in favor of reformed projects that are eliminativist towards the distinctively philosophical aims and methods. In this paper, after outlining the project that SRD-participants have been involved in for some time now—which we call the Received View—we discuss two dissolution-proposals: sociological externalism and localism. We argue that these projects are incomplete and that, even when judged (...) in themselves, they cannot flourish without the ‘traditional’ philosophical reflection they wish to get rid of. However, although not substitutes for the Received View, those projects have some insightful features. These are assigned their proper place in the dialectics of SRD, which is shown to be an instance of the method of reflective equilibrium (MRE). Lastly—based on Michael DePaul’s work—we provide a response to the well-known concern that MRE is epistemically circular, by claiming that MRE is the only rational method of inquiry. Overall, our goal is ‘therapeutic’: we try to mitigate the anxiety caused by simultaneously believing that SRD is circular and suspecting that there is a good way out of the circle that we just haven’t found yet. For, having dismissed the suspicion that there might be a good trick to dissolve the circle, one may learn to live in it and be more calm in carrying on with what one has. (shrink)

Maurizio Ferraris explores how, through the reading of Proust's _In Search of Lost Time_, one can explore memory, art, and society, using the book as a guide for living life.

This article pays heed to Klaus Held’s work by focusing on his last book _Die Geburt der Philosophie bei den Griechen_. The article shows that the book brings together two central themes that occupied Held throughout. First, how the birth of philosophy coincides with the birth of the polis (the political world) and second, how the pre-Socratics gave philosophical credence to the world in which we live, a world which Husserl later calls the “life world.” Through a novel and unorthodox (...) reading of Parmenides, Held shows that the option is not between two paths: the path of truth and the path of doxa. Instead Parmenides shows that there is only one path: The path of truth is the path of doxa. It is this insight that allows Held to argue that philosophy needs to pay heed to the world in which we live. This is the world as it appears and matters to us. Held thus believes that we learn from the pre-Socratics that the ecological crisis we face today of philosophical significance. (shrink)

In his most recent book, Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion, Henry Rosemont defends against those who would call his reading of Confucianism—he sees it as a type of Role Ethics—a misinterpretation. Rosemont contends that Confucian Role Ethics is important for challenging individualism, even if it is somehow unfaithful to pre-Qin texts. He writes that he could "simply re-title" his book "Role Ethics: A Different Approach to Moral Philosophy Based on a Creative (...) Misreading of Early Confucian Writings". In Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning: A Philosophical Interpretation, Geir Sigurðsson... (shrink)