Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China;There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds– Gregory Bateson (1972, p. 492)While there are classical anteced...

Michael A. Petersa and Fazal Rizvib aBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China; bMelbourne University, Melbourne, Australia Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘no...

There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds, and it is characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself.–Gregory Bateson, Steps Towards an Ecology of Mind...

Ronald Barnett pursues this quest through an exploration of pairs of contending concepts that speak to the idea of the university such as space and time; being ...

I begin by arguing that a consistent general naturalism must be understood in terms of methodological maxims rather than metaphysical doctrines. Some specific maxims are proposed. I then defend a generalized naturalism from the common objection that it is incapable of accounting for the normative aspects of human life, including those of scientific practice itself. Evolutionary naturalism, however, is criticized as being incapable of providing a sufficient explanation of categorical moral norms. Turning to the epistemological norms of science itself, particularly (...) those governing the empirical testing of specific models, I argue that these should be regarded as conditional rather than categorical and that, as such, can be given a naturalistic justification. The justification, however, is more cognitive than evolutionary. The historical development of science is found to be a better place for applying evolutionary ideas. After briefly considering the possibility of a naturalistic understanding of mathematics and logic, I turn to the problem of reconciling scientific realism with an evolutionary picture of scientific development. The solution, I suggest, is to understand scientific knowledge as being “perspectival” rather than absolutely objective. I first argue that scientific observation, whether by humans or instruments, is perspectival. This argument is extended to scientific theorizing which is regarded not as the formulation of universal laws of nature but as the construction of principles to be used in the construction of models to be applied to specific natural systems. The application of models, however, is argued to be not merely opportunistic but constrained by the methodological presumption that we live in a world with a definite causal structure even though we can understand it only from various perspectives. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the meaning of the idea of human rights in the works of Kant and Habermas. As a starting point of this examination we take Rorty's Oxford Amnesty Lecture of 1993. In this lecture Rorty claims, among other things, that a Kantian foundationalist approach to human rights is outmoded. It is better to neglect the question concerning our nature as human beings and substitute it for the question what we can make of ourselves. Kant's account of (...) the equal respect that is due to every person, tends to forget that outside our circle of post-Enlightenment European culture most people do not understand why rational agency is a sufficient condition for membership in a moral community. The borders of our moral community are often enough the borders of our family, group or society and do not include every human being. This restriction of the moral community poses a serious challenge to Kantian moral and political theory. On the basis of an analysis of the idea of human rights and the principle of popular sovereignty in the works of Kant and Habermas we try to show that the main claim of both authors is not so much a claim to knowledge about the nature of human beings, but a claim to the counterfactual conditions of a system of rights. As legal subjects we cannot claim a right to equal liberty for ourselves and people like us and deny it to everyone outside the borders of our moral community. As legal subjects we may no longer choose the medium or the language in which we can actualize our autonomy. Every system of rights presupposes certain counterfactual conditions, among which a right to equal liberties, and a certain performative meaning. (shrink)

Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom is a groundbreaking collection of essays by leading scholars, who examine and respond to the tension that many educators face in valuing student creativity but believing that they cannot support it given the curricular constraints of the classroom. Is it possible for teachers to nurture creative development and expression without drifting into curricular chaos? Do curricular constraints necessarily lead to choosing conformity over creativity? This book combines the perspectives of top educators and psychologists to generate (...) practical advice for considering and addressing the challenges of supporting creativity within the classroom. It is unique in its balance of practical recommendations for nurturing creativity and thoughtful appreciation of curricular constraints. This approach helps ensure that the insights and advice found in this collection will take root in educators' practice, rather than being construed as yet another demand placed on their overflowing plate of responsibilities. (shrink)

Consider a physical system for which a mathematically rigorous geometric quantization procedure exists. Now subject the system to a finite set of irreducible first class (bosonic) constraints. It is shown that there is a mathematically rigorous BRST quantization of the constrained system whose cohomology at ghost number zero recovers the constrained quantum states. Moreover this space of constrained states has a well-defined Hilbert space structure inherited from that of the original system. Treatments of these ideas in the physics literature are (...) more general but suffer from having states with infinite or zero "norms" and thus are not admissible as states. Also BRST operators for many systems require regularization to be well-defined. In our more restricted context, we show that our treatment does not suffer from any of these difficulties. (shrink)

Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

The discovery of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in 2006 was heralded as a major breakthrough in stem cell research. Since then, progress in iPS cell technology has paved the way towards clinical application, particularly cell replacement therapy, which has refueled debate on the ethics of stem cell research. However, much of the discourse has focused on questions of moral status and potentiality, overlooking the ethical issues which are introduced by the clinical testing of iPS cell replacement therapy. First-in-human trials, (...) in particular, raise a number of ethical concerns including informed consent, subject recruitment and harm minimisation as well as the inherent uncertainty and risks which are involved in testing medical procedures on humans for the first time. These issues, while a feature of any human research, become more complex in the case of iPS cell therapy, given the seriousness of the potential risks, the unreliability of available animal models, the vulnerability of the target patient group, and the high stakes of such an intensely public area of science. Our paper will present a detailed case study of iPS cell replacement therapy for Parkinson's disease to highlight these broader ethical and epistemological concerns. If we accept that iPS cell technology is fraught with challenges which go far beyond merely refuting the potentiality of the stem cell line, we conclude that iPS cell research should not replace, but proceed alongside embryonic and adult somatic stem cell research to promote cross-fertilisation of knowledge and better clinical outcomes. (shrink)

ExcerptI. Introduction The German political philosopher Carl Schmitt belongs to the class of political theorists, who maintain a tradition of separating the political from the moral.1 Drawing on the standard interpretation of Machiavelli2 and following the thinking of Hobbes,3 Schmitt makes two central claims that define his political theorization. The first claim is that the sovereign should possess “the monopoly to decide” what constitutes public order and security; the second claim is the use of the “friend-enemy” metaphor to characterize the (...) political.4 If the two claims are taken together, the logical corollary is that, on the…. (shrink)

Julia Driver has argued that there is a class of virtues that are compatible with or even require that an agent be ignorant in some respect. In this paper I argue for an alternative conception of the relationship between ignorance and virtue. The dispositions constitutive of virtue must include sensitivity to human limitations and fallibility. In this way the virtues accommodate ignorance, rather than require or promote it. I develop my account by considering two virtues in particular: tolerance (the paradigm (...) for my account) and modesty (which Driver employs as the paradigm for her account). Although several philosophers have offered alternatives to Driver's account of modesty and others have discussed tolerance as a moral virtue, an adequate account of the role of ignorance in the specification of the virtues generally has yet to be provided. I believe that similarities between the two virtues are instructive for defining that role. (shrink)