R.S. Peters is indisputably a major thinker in the philosophy of education and educational theory. Stefaan E. Cuypers and Christopher Martin's volume offers a coherent account of Peters' educational thought. This work is divided into three distinctive parts: 1. Intellectual Biography of R.S. Peters 2. Critical Exposition of R.S. Peters' Educational Thought 3. Reception and Relevance of R.S. Peters' Work.

Why do irrational beliefs adopt the trappings of science, to become what is known as “pseudoscience”? Here, we develop and extend an epidemiological framework to map the factors that explain the form and the popularity of irrational beliefs in scientific garb. These factors include the exploitation of epistemic vigilance, the misunderstanding of the authority of science, the use of the honorific title of “science” as an explicit argument for belief, and the phenomenon of epistemic negligence. We conclude by integrating the (...) various factors in an epidemiological framework and thus provide a comprehensive cultural evolutionary account of science mimicry. (shrink)

To secure cooperative opportunities people align their beliefs with the normative expectations of their social environment. These expectations are continuously managed by interactive reasoning, a process that results in dynamical pools of reasons. When people are more concerned about their social standing and reputation than truth, pools of reasons give rise to collective irrationalities. They determine what people should believe if they want to be known as a reliable group member. This account has implications for our understanding of human irrationality (...) and how to deal with it. (shrink)

_Reading R. S. Peters Today: Analysis, Ethics and the Aims of Education_ reassesses British philosopher Richard Stanley Peters’ educational writings by examining them against the most recent developments in philosophy and practice. Critically reassesses R. S. Peters, a philosopher who had a profound influence on a generation of educationalists Brings clarity to a number of key educational questions Exposes mainstream, orthodox arguments to sympathetic critical scrutiny.

An ideal of education is to ensure that our children develop into autonomous critical thinkers. The ‘indoctrination objection’, however, calls into question whether education, aimed at cultivating autonomous critical thinkers, is possible. The core of the concern is that since the young child lacks even modest capacities for assessing reasons, the constituent components of critical thinking have to be indoctrinated if there is to be any hope of the child's attaining the ideal. Our primary objective is to defuse this objection. (...) We argue, first, that even if the indoctrination objection can be dealt with at the level of beliefs by an account that distinguishes between beliefs instilled in the child at the non‐rational stage that are indoctrinative and those that are non‐indoctrinative, there can be non‐autonomous ‘proto critical thinkers’ who lack autonomy with respect to the requisite motivational components. We then ask what must be added to the account to ensure that proto critical thinkers develop into autonomous ones. We suggest that motivational elements, even if instilled at a stage at which the child has insufficiently developed cognitive capacities, can be ‘truly the child's own’ only relationally: the autonomous motivational elements are ones with respect to which the future child is self‐governing. (shrink)

Pseudoscience spreads through communicative and inferential processes that make people vulnerable to weird beliefs. However, the fact that pseudoscientific beliefs are unsubstantiated and have no basis in reality does not mean that the people who hold them have no reasons for doing so. We propose that, reasons play a central role in the diffusion of pseudoscience. On the basis of cultural epidemiology and the interactionist theory of reasoning, we will here analyse the structure and the function of reasons in the (...) propagation of pseudoscience. We conclude by discussing the implications of our approach for the understanding of human irrationality. (shrink)

Richard Stanley Peters was one of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy of education in the twentieth century. After reviewing Peters’ disentanglement of the ambiguities of liberal education, I reconstruct his view on the status and the existential foundations of the humanities. What emerges from my reconstruction is an original justificatory argument for the value of liberal education as general education in the sense of initiation into the heritage of the humanities. To close, I evaluate the scope and power of (...) this argument from the existential concern of the humanities. (shrink)

In this chapter, I reconstruct the basic structure of Peters’ analytic response to educational progressivism as politically expressed in the 1967 Plowden Report. The report expressed a particular line of thought in educational theory, namely that of educational progressivism or child-centred education. In the 1960s, Peters introduced the analytic paradigm into the philosophy of education in Great Britain. In the socio-economic context of the 1960s, this new paradigm had some institutional as well as political effects. In particular, Peters’ theoretical response (...) to the Plowden Report in Perspectives on Plowden had a practical influence. The chapter proceeds as follows. After a short historical note and a brief rehearsal of the contrast between progressivism and traditionalism, I detail Peters’ fundamental presuppositions in the light of which his critique of child-centred education can be elucidated. These two main presuppositions are, first, the primacy of the social or the public and, second, the ideal of liberal education. Next, I organise his critique around two central themes: first, education and its aims, and, second, the curriculum and the teacher. (shrink)

The puzzle of belief arises as currently no definition captures the various ways in which people believe. As a solution to this puzzle and to make the study of belief empirically tractable, Van Leeuwen and Lombrozo suggest acknowledging the plurality of beliefs and organizing beliefs according to their shared functions and traits. However, their proposal does not make yet the distinction between proper and derived functions of belief‐generating cognitive systems. For that, we need a theoretical perspective anchored in evolutionary thinking. (...) Such a perspective allows us to recognize the adaptive problems belief‐generating cognitive systems solve and what sorts of beliefs they will tend to produce. By analyzing beliefs based on evolutionary considerations, we not only make the puzzle of belief empirically tractable, but also take an important step toward solving it. (shrink)

Sijilmassi et al. claim that historical myths are technologies of recruitment that mimic cues of fitness interdependence. Paradoxically, they also claim that people are vigilant and that these myths might not and do not have to convince others, which raises questions about how these myths become culturally successful. Thinking about historical myths as commitment devices helps overcome this paradox.

It is suggested that the current hierarchical (Frankfurt-Dworkin) model of personal autonomy in philosophical anthropology gives expression to the fundamental presupposition of self-determination in much educational practice and pedagogical theory. Radical criticisms are made of the notions of self-identification and self-evaluation which are of the utmost importance to this model. Instead of relying on such ‘acts of the will’ as decision and choice for the explanation of self-identification and self- evaluation, the non-intentional as well as the non-individualistic character of these (...) processes is stressed and analysed in terms of volitional necessity and social dependence. The consequence of this criticism is the substitution of the concept of extreme personal autonomy by that of caring about oneself as the first principle of education. (shrink)

In his recent book Islam Evolving: Radicalism, Reformation, and the Uneasy Relationship with the Secular West, Taner Edis discusses Islamic responses to the modern world and how the West deals and should deal with them. He argues convincingly that the biggest threat to secular liberalism is not fundamentalism but an Islamic form of modernity. He attributes some of the latter's success to Western neoliberalism and to the failure of secular liberals to come up with persuasive arguments. He thus puts part (...) of the blame on the West. However, although self-criticism is an essential aspect of a well-functioning democracy, we should not take it too far. Instead, there exist convincing reasons why a secular liberal society is strongly preferable to a religious conservative one. (shrink)

The moral disciplining theory proposes that people moralize excessive innocent behavior to discipline others to behave in ways that facilitate cooperation. However, such disciplining might not always be effective. To solve this puzzle of ineffective moralization we should think of puritanism in terms of moral advertisement aimed at reputation management rather than the manipulation of others.

In the second half of the twentieth century, two persons had an enormous impact on one branch of philosophy: that branch was the philosophy of education, and these persons were R.S. Peters and I. Scheffler, the founding fathers of the analytic approach in this philosophical subdiscipline. This chapter, first, introduces and contextualizes the analytic school of thought in the philosophy of education. Preliminary, the identity of analytic philosophy as such is outlined. The focus is primarily on showing how analytic philosophy (...) of education is actually done, and not so much on enumerating theories or dropping names A companion to the philosophy of education. Blackwell, Oxford, 2003] already gave an informative catalog). Next, as an example of the analytic approach, the chapter details conceptions of liberal education and delineates justifications of its value. (shrink)

In this paper, I forge a strong educational bond between opera and the humanities: opera as liberal education, not just additional to or exemplary of. After rehearsing the well-known present-day criticisms of liberal education, I first make the diagnosis that the trouble with liberal education as teaching and learning the humanities is not so much its theoretical justification as its practical implementation. To neutralize the criticisms and to solve the problem of how to practically realize a theoretically defensible goal, my (...) proposal is, next, to exploit opera as the vehicle of liberal education. Finally, I detail my proposal, offering suggestions about the way opera as liberal education can function on the curriculum. (shrink)

The so-called 'Dutroux-case'- the revelation of the kidnapping and the murder of four underaged girls and the apparent malfunctions of the judiciary and the police forces, was the most important issue on the 1997 political agenda. Unanimously, the Chamber of Representatives agreed upon the recommendations of a parliamentary inquiry into the bungled police investigation. Yet the unanimity disappeared quickly when the recommendations on the reorganisation of the police forces had to be implemented.New revelations of the Dassault-case, and the involvement of (...) both socialist parties, put the government underpressure. The events themselves, and the discontent they caused in some majority parties, urged the government to revise the governmental programme. Guy Spitaels, chairman of the Walloon parliament resigned. Guy Coëme, former minister of Defence, alleged ofpassive corruption in the Dassault-case, was referred to the Supreme Court of Appeal by decision of the Chamber of Representatives. (shrink)

This article deals with the process through which party leaders in the Parti Socialiste were selected in the eighties and the nineties. Despite theparty congress's entitlement to elect leaders, the critical factor in winning the leadership has been endorsement by predecessors. G. Spitaels and Ph. Busquin are cases in point.The congress merely serves as a ritual, as a consequence of which the outcome of the vote is highly predictable, influenced as it is by party events and role-expectations. Socialist party leaders (...) have a wide arsenal at their disposal to rule the party in a rather autoritarian way; a classic example being the plebisciteBusquin provoked in 1994 to expand bis power. How, by whom and to what extent they obtain and enforce this autoritarian power are key questions in this study. (shrink)

De Franse schrijver en denker Albert Camus (1913-1960) was een van de voornaamste intellectuele stemmen van de twintigste eeuw. Zijn vertolking van de ervaringen van absurditeit en revolte in essays, romans en toneelstukken vonden brede weerklank in het naoorlogse Europa en daarbuiten. Camus’ scepsis ten aanzien van de grote ideologieën, zijn gevecht met het nihilisme en zijn onvermoeibare verdediging van het leven en de menselijkheid zijn nog altijd voor velen een bron van inspiratie. Dit boek geeft een beknopt overzicht van (...) het leven en de belangrijkste werken van Camus. Maar vooral wordt de ontwikkeling van zijn denken van absurditeit naar revolte geschetst in een historische en literair-wijsgerige context. Daarbij komt ook de vraag naar de overkoepelende eenheid van zijn werk aan bod. (shrink)

The demarcation between science and pseudoscience is a long-standing problem in philosophy of science. Although philosophers have been hesitant to engage in this project since Larry Laudan announce...

This article points out an internal tension, or even conflict, in the conceptual foundations of Harvey Siegel’s conception of critical thinking. Siegel justifies critical thinking, or critically rational autonomy, as an educational ideal first and foremost by an appeal to the Kantian principle of respect for persons. It is made explicit that this fundamental moral principle is ultimately grounded in the Kantian conception of autonomous practical reason as normatively and motivationally robust. Yet this Kantian conception openly conflicts with Siegel’s own (...) two-component theory of critical thinking, which on close inspection turns out to be a version of the Humean conception of instrumental practical reason as normatively and motivationally powerless. It is concluded that Siegel cannot have it both ways: he cannot appeal both to means-end and to robust rationality. Siegel’s Kantian justification of the critical thinking educational ideal is, therefore, found wanting in terms of his own Humean premises. (shrink)

Science is a collaborative effort to produce knowledge. Scientists thus must assess what information is trustworthy and who is a competent and honest source and partner. Facing the problem of trust, we can expect scientists to be vigilant. In response to their peers’ vigilance scientists will provide reasons, not only to convince their colleagues to adopt their practices or beliefs, but also to demonstrate that their beliefs and practices are justified. By justifying their beliefs and practices, scientists also justify themselves. (...) Reasons in science thus do not only function as tools of persuasion but also to manage reputation. This analysis strongly suggests that science constitutes a moral system, which has implications for the study and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Autonomy is, among other things, an actual psychological condition, a capacity that can be developed, and an educational ideal. This paper contextualises, analyses, criticises and extends the theory of Richard S. Peters on these three aspects of autonomy.

In his 1973 paper ?The Justification of Education? R.S. Peters aspired to give a non-instrumental justification of education. Ever since, his so-called ?transcendental argument? has been under attack and most critics conclude that it does not work. They have, however, thrown the baby away with the bathwater, when they furthermore concluded that Peters? justificatory project itself is futile. This article takes another look at Peters? justificatory project. As against a Kantian interpretation, it proposes an axiological-perfectionist interpretation to bring out the (...) permanent importance of this project and suggests some possible strategies for its successful execution. (shrink)

This introduction to this special issue offers an overview of R. S. Peters' seminal role in the development of modern philosophy of education, acknowledging the originality and range of his work, and indicating his continuing importance to the field. It explains the structure and organisation of the collection and provides a rationale for this body of work as a rereading of Peters in the light of current concerns.

Harry Frankfurt is one of the leading contemporary analytical philosophers. His research interests are mainly free will and moral responsibility, as well as moral psychology and ethics in general. He is the author of Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen: The Defense of Reason in Descartes’s Meditations — published in 1970 with a French translation in 1989 — and numerous scholarly articles on Descartes’s philosophy. He is the editor of Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays which appeared in 1972 . His most (...) important book until now is The Importance of What We Care About published in 1988 and a new work, provisionally entitled Necessity, Volition, and Love is forthcoming later in 1998. (shrink)

Creationists argue that 'Darwinism' hardly deserves the label of science. By employing a whole range of tactics, they downplay its scientific merit. Firstly, they set up definitions of science and claim that evolutionary theory cannot live up to them. Science, they claim, is based on observation and experimentation. As no scientist ever witnessed one species evolving into another, evolutionary theory remains 'just a theory'. Secondly, they convert evolutionary theory into a concept no evolutionary biologist would ever defend. For instance, they (...) claim that Darwinian evolution is a process of pure chance, requiring matter to form complex features at random. Therefore, evolutionary theory fails dramatically as an adequate explanation for biological 'design'. Thirdly, they demand evidence evolutionary theory cannot deliver in principle. Paleontologists do not expect to find exact 'missing links' as there is none to be found. Evolution is not the ascension of a great chain of being. It is an extraordinary response of a religion that longs to be science. Turning Darwinian theory into a straw man serves at least two functions. Firstly, it allows creation 'scientists' to discard the evidence as insufficient. Secondly, it fits in nicely with the creationist strife for balanced treatment. (shrink)

The leading Intelligent Design theorist William Dembski (Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham MD, 2002) argued that the first No Free Lunch theorem, first formulated by Wolpert and Macready (IEEE Trans Evol Comput 1: 67–82, 1997), renders Darwinian evolution impossible. In response, Dembski’s critics pointed out that the theorem is irrelevant to biological evolution. Meester (Biol Phil 24: 461–472, 2009) agrees with this conclusion, but still thinks that the theorem does apply to simulations of evolutionary processes. According to Meester, the theorem shows (...) that simulations of Darwinian evolution, as these are typically set in advance by the programmer, are teleological and therefore non-Darwinian. Therefore, Meester argues, they are useless in showing how complex adaptations arise in the universe. Meester uses the term teleological inconsistently, however, and we argue that, no matter how we interpret the term, a Darwinian algorithm does not become non-Darwinian by simulation. We show that the NFL theorem is entirely irrelevant to this argument, and conclude that it does not pose a threat to the relevance of simulations of biological evolution. (shrink)

This article deals with the consequences of an increased number of levels of political decision-making, on the way in which political careers are built. In the traditional bottomup perspective, political careers started at the municipal level. The best were chosen to represent the party in regional assemblies, first, and eventually in the national parliament. In this perspective, a mandate of Member of European Parliament was the highest obtainable office. Evidence from the 1979-99 period shows that the importance of 'local political (...) experience' in recruiting MPs is decreasing. However still, the Belgian figure remains high in comparative perspective : in 1999 no less than 70 % ofthe members of the federal House of Representatives and of the regional Flemish Parliament have previously been local councillor. Moreover, still 60 % combines a mandate as local councillor with their parliamentary mandate. Only a limited number ofpreviously regional Flemish MPs became federal MPs in 1999, so that one could not speak of frequent level-hopping, nor of a hierarchy among these offices. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to show that externalist compatibilism in the debate on personal autonomy and manipulated freedom is as yet untenable. I will argue that Alfred R. Mele’s paradigmatic, history-sensitive externalism about psychological autonomy in general and autonomous deliberation in particular faces an insurmountable problem: it cannot satisfy the crucial condition of adequacy “H” for externalist theories that I formulate in the text. Specifically, I will argue that, contrary to first appearances, externalist compatibilism does not resolve the CNC (...) manipulation problem. After briefly reflecting on the present status of responses to the manipulation problem in the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists of various stripes, I will draw the over-all pessimistic conclusion that no party deals with this problem satisfactorily. (shrink)

Recent events indicate that creationists are becoming increasingly active in the Netherlands. This article offers an overview of these events. First, I discuss the introduction of intelligent-design (ID) creationism into the Dutch public sphere by a renowned physicist, Cees Dekker. Later, Dekker himself shifted toward a more evolution-friendly position, theistic evolution. Second, we see how Dekker was followed in this shift by Andries Knevel, an important figure within the Dutch evangelical broadcasting group, the Evangelische Omroep (EO). His conversion to ID, (...) and subsequently to theistic evolution, brought him into conflict with young-Earth creationists who still strongly identify themselves with the EO. Third, provoked by the dissidence of prominent orthodox believers and the celebrations surrounding the Darwin year, young-Earth creationists became very visible. After three decades of relative silence, they started a project to make sure that the Dutch people would hear of the “alternatives” to evolutionary theory. This article (1) adds to the growing number of reports on creationists' increased activity in Europe and (2) suggests that ID, in a context different from the United States, did not unite but rather divided the Dutch orthodox Protestant community. (shrink)

abstract An appeal to children's authenticity is widespread in major debates in the philosophy of education. However, no evident uniform conception of authenticity informs the dialectic. We begin with examples that confirm this multiplicity. We then uncover a common strand that unifies these seemingly differing conceptions: authenticity is exemplified by motivational elements, such as the agent's desires, when these elements are, in a manner to be explicated, ‘truly the agent's own’. It is this view of authenticity that is the mainstay (...) of a predicament in the philosophy of education: if education entails intentional instilment of certain motivational elements in the child but such intentional moulding, in the absence of the agent's consent, is generally incompatible with authenticity, how is an authentic education possible? We respond by developing a relational account of authenticity that denies that motivational elements are authentic in their own right; they are authentic only relative to ensuring certain ends. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to give an interpretation of Harry Frankfurt’s complex theory of the will with respect to the issue of “autonomy and necessity”. My central claim is that Frankfurt’s employment of the concept of the will is equivocal. He actually uses three distinct conceptions of the will without ever distinguishing them from one another. I shall introduce and justify such a clarifying tripartite distinction. Although my discussion will be limited to Frankfurt’s view of the will, this distinction (...) and the points made about its components can easily be generalized. In my opinion, then, such a tripartite distinction must form an essential part of any rich theory of the will.Both the first and the second conception of the will can readily be understood within the scope of the debate between compatibilism and incompatibilism. The third conception, however, transcends the framework of this classical opposition because the autonomy of this third kind of will positively requires necessity. Autonomy is not only compatible with necessity : according to the third conception, the former also intrinsically involves the latter. Although this conception of the will is somewhat unfamiliar and non-standard in the debate, I shall try to show that it captures an important fact about our volitional nature — a deep fact which is often overlooked or neglected. (shrink)

In the field of cultural evolution it is generally assumed that the study of culture and cultural change would benefit enormously from being informed by evolutionary thinking. Recently, however, there has been much debate about what this “being informed” means. According to the standard view, an interesting analogy obtains between cultural and biological evolution. In the literature, however, the analogy is interpreted and used in at least three distinct, but interrelated ways. We provide a taxonomy in order to clarify these (...) different meanings. Subsequently, we discuss the alternatives model of cultural attraction theory and memetics, which both challenge basic assumptions of the standard view. Finally, we briefly summarize the contributions to the special issue on Darwin in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, which is the result of a collaborative project between scholars and scientists from the universities of Lille and Ghent. Furthermore, we explain how they add to the discussions about the integration of evolutionary thinking and the study of culture. (shrink)