The conflicts arising between the pedagogical preferences of the fields of instructional design and technology (IDT) and social foundations of education are substantial. This conflict is primarily one of pedagogical values separating the Social Foundations with its emphasis on critical and creative thinking and the presumption of value and theory neutrality inherent in IDT. This is a serious issue because, increasingly, educators use IDT models to translate Social Foundations courses with social justice and equity outcomes into online formats. Much is (...) lost. This article offers a discussion of the theoretical grounding of IDT (task-analysis) versus social foundations in regards to implications for the instructional social organization of online social foundations classrooms. This article uses the notion of signature pedagogy to describe sociocultural literacies as a basic tenet in social foundations of education. By doing so, it is demonstrated how these important theoretical positions are currently playing out in online instruction and space, to extend their relevance by introducing newer concepts such as Digital Cartesianism and copresence, and to provide a concrete example of what these concerns look like in the current push towards digital formats. In the current context of the use of electronic, social, communication, and mobile technologies in education, we find a new site to continue challenging the assumed neutrality of the technological model for education. (shrink)

The dominant position of science in our culture has ended. In our postmodern world, belief that science will provide the answer to our problems and that progress is inevitable has been shaken, if not toppled. Optimism has been replaced by realism, creating a milieu for the development of intelligent Christian belief. Participating in the Trinity Institute's conference on ÒThe Church in a Postmodern Age, these six prominent scholars explore the breakdown of the basic tenets of the Enlightenment, the sorry state (...) of biblical literacy in our culture, Christian faith in a pluralistic world, the relevance of the Bible today, and the role of the church in our age. Contributors include Robert N. Bellah, Diogenes Allen, George A. Lindbeck, James B. Miller, Sandra M. Schneiders, and Rowan D. Williams. (shrink)

This work runs counter to the traditional interpretations of Peirce's philosophy by eliciting an inherent strand of pragmatic pluralism that is embedded in the very core of his thought and that weaves his various doctrines into a systematic ...

Using classical American pragmatism, the authors provide a philosophical framework for rethinking the nature of the corporation--how it is embedded in its natural, technological, cultural, and international environments, emphasizing throughout its pervasive relational and moral dimensions. They explore the relationship of this framework to other contemporary business ethics perspectives, as well as its implications for moral leadership in business and business education.

Unites George Herbert Mead and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in a shared rejection of substance philosophy as well as spectator theory of knowledge, in favor of a focus on the ultimacy of temporal process and the constitutive function of social praxis.

Introduction CLASSICAL American pragmatism represents a historical period in American philosophy, spanning a particular time frame and including the ...

INTRODUCTION In the philosophic world today, and especially within the context of the emerging American scene, pragmatism and phenomenology can each ...

Advances in technology are accelerating the momentum for change in all sectors of society. There is at present a lag time between the actual development and implementation of new technology and the public consciousness of the issues involved. The rapid rate of social change, however, emphasizes the critical role of the educational system and the need to continually estimate and evaluate direction to best serve the common good. Forty-five influential Minnesota leaders in education, business/industry and government were interviewed on issues (...) related to education and the changing economy. (shrink)

This essay compares and contrasts pragmatic naturalism with the more well known position of epistemological naturalism on several pivotal issues, in the process offering a pragmatic critique of the latter. It highlights their common rejection of both foundationalism and a priori methods and their positive claims that: what needs examination is not our concept of knowledge but knowledge itself; knowledge must be understood as tied to the world and as a natural phenomenon to be examined in its natural setting; the (...) epistemic endeavor involves unifying its three traditional projects of giving an account of what knowledge is, explaining how knowledge is possible, and providing useful epistemic advice, thus involving normative considerations; and the method of gaining knowledge in general is continuous with the method of science. Yet, there are very great divergences between the two naturalisms concerning the answers offered, and these are explored and evaluated in the development of the essay. (shrink)

C. I. Lewis was one of the most important thinkers of his generation. In this book, Sandra B. Rosenthal explores Lewis’s philosophical vision, and links his thought to the traditions of classical American pragmatism. Tracing Lewis’s influences, she explains the central concepts informing his thinking and how he developed a unique and practical vision of the human experience. She shows how Lewis contributed to the enrichment and expansion of pragmatism, opening new paths of constructive dialogue with other traditions. This (...) book will become a standard reference for readers who want to know more about one of American philosophy’s most distinguished minds. (shrink)

Mead's pragmatic focus on habit as the foundation of meaning is usually viewed in sharp contrast with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological examination of meaning within experience. This paper attempts to show the way in which the explicit focus of each philosopher's position is latent within that of the other. For Mead and Merleau-Ponty alike, the content of human awareness at all levels is inseparably linked with the structure of human behavior. And, for both, such a structure is permeated throughout by the "living (...) meaning" of anticipatory habit or vital intentionality. (shrink)

THE CONCEPT OF WORLD IN LEWIS'S PHILOSOPHY IS USUALLY\nTAKEN AS A COMMON-SENSE ONE INDICATING "WHAT IS THE CASE,"\nAND THEN IT IS NOTED THAT HIS STATEMENTS CONCERNING THE\nWORLD ARE INCONSISTENT WITH HIS PRAGMATICALLY ORIENTED\nPOSITION AS A WHOLE. HOWEVER, LEWIS'S CONCEPT OF WORLD IS A\nPRECISE TECHNICAL CONCEPT WHICH PROVIDES AN IMPORTANT KEY\nTO THE SYSTEMATIC UNITY OF HIS CONCEPTUAL PRAGMATISM.\nTHOUGH METAPHYSICAL REALITY IS A CONCRETE ONGOING PROCESS\nFAR DIFFERENT FROM THE WORLD, THIS LEADS TO A PROBLEM ONLY\nTHROUGH A CONFUSION OF METAPHYSICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL\nCATEGORIES; THE (...) WORLD IS BASICALLY A CONCEPT OF\nEPISTEMOLOGY. TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF THE WORLD IS TO\nUNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF THAT PRECISE ENCOMPASSING\nSTRUCTURE WHICH EMERGES FROM THE APPLICATION OF AN ABSTRACT\nCONCEPTUAL SYSTEM TO THE CONCRETE PROCESS AND WHICH, AS A\nPRODUCT OF THE LOGICAL INTERACTION OF BOTH, IS IN FACT\nIDENTICAL WITH NEITHER. (shrink)

This collection provides a thorough grounding in the philosophy of American pragmatism by examining the views of four principal thinkers - Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead - on issues of central and enduring importance to life in human society. Pragmatism emerged as a characteristically American response to an inheritance of British empiricism. Presenting a radical reconception of the nature of experience, pragmatism represents a belief that ideas are not merely to be contemplated but must (...) be put into action, tested and refined through experience. At the same time, the American pragmatists argued for an emphasis on human community that would offset the deep-seated American bias in favor of individualism. Far from being a relic of the past, pragmatism offers a dynamic and substantive approach to questions of human conduct, social values, scientific inquiry, religious belief, and aesthetic experience that lie at the center of contemporary life. This volume is an invaluable introduction to a school of thought that remains vital, instructive, and provocative. (shrink)

Before developing a pragmatically based account of this interrelationship, the ensuing discussion will very briefly explore the positions of John Rawls, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty to elicit certain relevant features. As a sketchy caricature, and with all the dangers sketchy caricatures involve, it can be said that Rawls' position exemplifies the individual as the source of important community arrangements, MacIntyre's the individual as the product of community arrangements, and Rorty's the freeing of the issue from ontological entanglements and presumptions.

LEWIS’s philosophy is most frequently linked with linguistic conventionalism and is interpreted as reductivistic in its theory of meaning and anti-metaphysical both in spirit and in specific content. Indeed, Lewis is often considered to represent a turning point in American philosophy, marking the beginning of its move away from classical American pragmatism and toward the analytic tradition—either the Vienna Circle type of positivism and constructionalism or the British ordinary language analysis of the post Wittgenstenian variety. True, Lewis is a pragmatist (...) of sorts—a pragmatic analyst. Such a standard script leads inevitably to the fashionable conclusion that there is "something very wrong" with his thought—his construction of objects out of sense-data does not work; his doctrine of the given is self-contradictory, etc. Thus, Lewis’s position becomes significant as an historical lesson in how not to construct one’s analytic philosophy. And, indeed, the fashionable conclusion is, in a certain sense, quite right. His "analytic philosophy" is open to all sorts of reasonable objections by reasonable critics. However, Lewis’s position yields such inadequate analytic philosophy precisely because his pragmatic position does not have its philosophic kinship with the analytic tradition but rather is permeated both in spirit and in content by the tradition of classical American pragmatism. (shrink)

Offers a pragmatically oriented reconstruction of the central issues of time.

In the last few years, some attempts have been made to overcome the disparity between environmental ethics and business ethics. However, as the situation now stands the various positions in business ethics have not incorporated any well-developed theoretical foundation for environmental issues, and conversely, environmental ethics is failing to capture an audience that could profit greatly from utilizing its theoretical insights and research. In this paper, we attempt to provide a unified conceptual framework for business ethics and environmental ethics that (...) can further the dialogue that has recently begun, perhaps bringing it to a deeper theoretical level. (shrink)

The uprootedness of experience from its ontological embeddedness in a natural world is at the core of much contemporary philosophy which, like pragmatism, aims to reject foundationalism in all its forms. All hold positions that, in varying ways, there is a bedrock basis on which to build an edifice of knowledge, something objective that justifies rational arguments concerning what is the single best position for making available or picturing the structure of reality as it exists independently of our various contextually (...) set inquiries. There can be no non-perspectival framework within which differences—social, moral, scientific, etc.—can be evaluated and resolved. These positions may, like pragmatism, focus on the .. (shrink)