Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Baltimore Learning Community (BLC) project established a networked electronic learning community through the use of high-quality digital science and social studies resources and high-speed networking. The project will enable science and social studies teachers to access images, text, Web sites, and full motion video via high-speed connections to the Internet. Extending such multimedia configurations into urban schools has facilitated a rethinking of teaching and learning in content classes as well as a reconsideration (...) of how media and method are integrated. It facilitates teacher engagement in designing authentic classroom instruction framed by performance assessments and links project teachers and school site coordinators through a client server, thus promoting a network of teachers and students engaged in learning across schools. However, such a project is not without its challenges—human as well as technological. This article discusses the BLC project identifying technology possibilities, current situational constraints, and implications of creating networked learning communities across disciplines and beyond school walls. (shrink)

No part ot Plato's writings has been more debated than the three similes in Books VI.-VII. of the Republic, and still there is a diversity of opinion about their meaning. I believe that most of these difficulties arise from certain assumptions about their purpose which need revision. The current view applies the Cave to the Line, as Plato seems to direct, and this application, which is itself attended by considerable difficulties, leads to an assimilation of the two figures till they (...) seem to have much the same content and purpose. Again, as this makes the lower line appear to be the phenomenal world, it is thought that the simile of the sun foreshadows the theme of the Line by hinting at a connexion between the intelligible and the sensible which is made more explicit in the Line. Thus the group of similes seem mainly intended to show the dependence of Becoming upon Being. This paper will argue that such a view depends upon the misrepresentation of the symbolism adopted by Plato, that two antithetical groups of symbols are confused with one another, and that symbols are even identified with antitypes. Owing to these misinterpretations the Form of the Good has been mistaken for a material cause; both the Line and the Cave have been thought to reveal Plato as embarrassed by a dualism between sense and intellect, and the purpose of the Cave in particular, since the error is cumulative, has been completely obscured. This paper will attempt to substitute for current accounts another interpretation which will relate the three similes closely with the political arguments of Book VI., and with the Platonic education which is set forth in close connexion with them. (shrink)

In verse twelve of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu makes a curious claim about the five flavors; namely that they cause people not to taste or that they jade the palate. The five flavors are: sweet, sour, salt, bitter and spicy or hot as in 'heat'. To the Western mind, the claim, 'The five flavors cause them [persons] to not taste,' is counterintuitive; on the contrary, the presence of the five flavors in a dish or in a meal would (...) expand or enhance the senses and the palate, i.e., taste would be augmented by the five flavors. So what is the plausible meaning of the Taoistic claim? To answer this question, I look very briefly at the history of the doctrine of the five flavors and the history of Chinese cuisine. Lao Tzu probably has Confucian feasts in mind in making such a claim, but other interpretations are discussed. (shrink)

Commentary with 11 supercommentaries, on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, work on Vedanta philosophy.

The article proposes that the hypothetical framework of Kierkegaard's "Philosophical Fragments" is determined by the question 'How is it possible for one to become a disciple?' An account of this framework is provided by employing an original interpretation of the concept 'the Moment'. This enables an understanding of 'the condition' by means of a contrast between 'Universalist' and 'Particularist' perspectives. Moreover, it is only when the insights offered by both perspectives are combined that the answer to the determining question of (...) the Fragments becomes apparent. (shrink)

In "mind-Body identity, Privacy and categories" richard rorty set forth a new form of the identity theory of the mind, (called the 'disappearance' version) in which he suggested that instead of identifying sensations with neural events, Sensations might be eliminated. Using an illustration of rorty's I show that 'pain' cannot come to refer to a brain process for neural events are neither pleasant nor unpleasant. For 'pain' to refer to something unpleasant, We would have to give 'brain process' the connotation (...) of unpleasantness. But to do this would be to identify the brain process with the sensation of pain--I.E., To return to the older identity theory. (shrink)

An introductory work on the various school of Indian philosophy.

In this lecture Justice Breyer examines three classical criticisms of constitutional judicial review. Those criticisms say that a grant to unelected judges of the power to set aside legislation as contrary to a written constitution leads to judicial decision-making that is (a) undemocratic, (b) subjective, and impractical. Justice Breyer describes features of the constitutional decision-making that do not dictate results in individual cases, but none the less hold the judges' 'subjective' will in check. He also describes necessary judicial efforts to (...) focus upon considerations of administrative practicality. The description seeks, not to refute the criticisms in their entirety, but to help evaluate the extent to which those criticisms militate against the adoption of a system of constitutional judicial review. (shrink)