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In this essay, I propose a novel way of thinking about Kant's philosophical methodology during the critical period. According to this interpretation, the critical Kant can generally be understood as operating within a "capacities‐first" philosophical framework – that is, within a framework in which our basic rational or cognitive capacities play both an explanatorily and epistemically fundamental role in philosophy – or, at least, in the sort of philosophy that limited creatures like us are capable of. In discussing this idea, I consider the complicated relationship between the explanatory and epistemic roles that such capacities play in Kant. I also sketch how this way of thinking about Kant's methodology can illuminate the foundations of both his theoretical and his practical philosophy, before discussing some of Kant's reasons for finding this approach to philosophy attractive. I close with a brief discussion of the contemporary relevance of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some actions are free and others are not. But free will also comes in degrees. This paper offers a novel account of degrees of free will, taking as its starting point the idea that an action is free to the extent to which the agent was sensitive, in acting, to reasons for or against performing that action. Though lip service is often paid to the idea that reasons‐sensitivity comes in degrees, however, the details turn out to be harder to pin down than one might initially have thought. I criticise three recent accounts of degrees of reasons‐sensitivity, arguing that none of them succeed in capturing our intuitions about degrees of free will in particular cases. I then defend an alternative approach, which combines a causal account of sensitivity with my own preferred metaphysics of degrees of causal contribution. As well as avoiding the problems faced by its rivals, I'll argue that this account provides a novel response to the situationist threat to free will, arising out of empirical studies purporting to show that 'situational factors' play a larger role in producing actions than we typically assume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I want to expound the fundamental thought of Fichte's Grundlage des Naturrechts: a freely acting individual is her relation to every other freely acting individual. Their relation is this: they know each other to be free. This knowledge is practical, that is, it is activity, and it is a relation, that is, they who are so related act one toward the other. This knowledge, this activity, this relation, which the free individual is, is the relation of right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a general framework for considering education's autonomy and its implications for the relationship between education and philosophy. In it, Doron Yosef‐Hassidim examines an initiative in Israel that calls for an autonomous secular public education and uses it as a context to clarify what education's autonomy means and to identify its major characteristics. To enhance the idea of education's autonomy, he further argues that education should not be subordinate to philosophy and that the question about being human must be kept open and educational. In particular, education's autonomy requires resisting the temptation of applying a philosophical framework about being human to education, even if the particular philosopher of education agrees with the philosophical framework. Finally, Yosef‐Hassidim proposes a strategy for treating the question about being human as one that involves both the work of philosophers of education and practitioners in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The P4C Co-Operative (p4c.com) and SAPERE (the UK's national charity supporting P4C) offer training classes for instructors, specific P4C lesson plans and materials, and various levels of P4C accreditation/certification (earned through completion of P4C instructor curriculum and course attendance, among other requirements). While the conclusion of D'Olimpio's argument is well received, this reader is unsure whether Adorno was as dismissive of film and mass art as D'Olimpio makes him out to be. In her brief sketch, D'Olimpio suggests using "real life or fictional examples and case studies in the classroom" ( I MME i , 82) and "incorporating mass media and social media examples in the CoI pedagogy in the P4C classroom" ( I MME i , 102). However, it is to question whether D'Olimpio is suggesting that for a teacher to effectively cultivate critical perspectivism in their classroom, they must adopt the P4C method, use P4C materials, or further, seek certification in the P4C method. [Extracted from the article]

Within the Information Systems domain, employers are often dissatisfied with graduates' competence of the necessary technical skills in the area of integrated business processes. However, teaching complex concepts related to integrated business processes—such as the 5S lean philosophy—is particularly challenging. In this article, we describe how Kolb's experiential learning cycle was used to design a direct‐experience project to support students' learning of the 5S lean philosophy. We also share the results of our inquiry into the effectiveness of the project in maximizing students' learning of and ability to apply the 5S lean philosophy. Based on the results of this study, students' knowledge of categories of waste and lean tools and knowledge of 5S steps significantly increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shepherd and Justus argue that experimental philosophy has an important role to play in the method of Carnapian explication, facilitating the preparatory stage during which the concept to be explicated is clarified. I raise concerns about their specific proposal, before sketching an alternative. In particular, I suggest that experimental philosophy can directly aid the construction of fruitful concepts. This provides a clear practical role for experimental philosophy, both within the sciences and theoretical inquiry more generally. In this respect, experimental philosophy may rightly be construed as one aspect of applied philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Hyland's (2005) metadiscourse framework, the researchers investigated how two English as a second or foreign language instructors constructed their identity in a teaching philosophy statement written for a master's in TESOL ( MATESOL) course. Analyses revealed that both instructors employed almost all metadiscourse resources in the model to construct the identity of a competent graduate student and that of a knowledgeable and reflective teacher. In addition, their identity construction reinforced the writing conventions associated with the imagined community (Norton, 2013) of graduate student teachers while also affording them the opportunity to exercise some degree of teacher agency. Findings offer insights into how linguistic resources can be mobilized to construct a strong and unique teaching philosophy statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wittgenstein in his later writing often remarked on the negative influence of language on philosophy. Here, I call attention to a previously unnoticed but significant way that language has influenced philosophy: we use the very same vocabulary in two different ways, in philosophical talk and in our everyday interactive speaking-situations. Our propensity for using this double talk has prevented us from resolving most philosophical problems. Is our attraction to philosophical talk the result of our learning to use a phonetic alphabet, so that words can be used outside of interactive situations? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of argumentative strategies that promote the defense of well-grounded personal arguments contributes to the development of a critical, ethical and political thought that leads to responsible and socially committed people. Based on the quality of the produced arguments in philosophical essays, this work evaluates the potential application of a cooperative learning method – the constructive controversy – for the development of argumentative skills in secondary school students in philosophy. The quality of the arguments was evaluated through the analysis of a total of 144 philosophical essays produced by the students over a school year. The results point to the advantages of using this method over more traditional ones in the acquisition of argumentative skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores from a Hindu Gandhian perspective the challenges, failures and successes of the comparative study of religions, particularly as applied to Hindu dialogue with Islam and Christianity. It discusses the difficulty of teachers and students in the West to accept and understand the fact that the curriculum of graduate and undergraduate programs in philosophy in an Indian university needs an evenly balanced formation in both Indian and Western philosophy.

This paper challenges a conception of philosophy that is seldom clearly expressed, yet appears to be prevalent in contemporary academic philosophy. On the website of the American Philosophical Quarterly, some sentences appear that articulate well the essentials of that assumption. This article discusses those sentences and assumes that they may be symptomatic of a widespread blindness to a fundamental aspect of the nature of philosophical study. The first part of the article consists of an analysis and criticism of the sentences in question. The second part investigates some possible defences of the sentences and the conception of philosophy they express. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with Peter Sloterdijk, the most controversial thinker and media theorist in Germany is presented. When asked to explain about his anthropo-technology concept, he refers on the hypothesis on psychophysical and social constitution of the species Homo sapiens. He also emphasizes the uncertainty of the difference between institutionalized and de-institutionalized knowledge.

This article is a data-driven critique of T he P hilosophical G ourmet R eport ( PGR), the most institutionally influential publication in the field of Anglophone philosophy. The PGR is influential because it is perceived to be of high value. The article demonstrates that the actual value of the PGR, in its current form, is not nearly as high as it is assumed to be and that the PGR is, in fact, detrimental to the profession. The article lists and explains five objections to the methods and methodology of the report. Taken together, the objections demonstrate that the report is severely flawed, failing to provide the information it purports to and damaging the profession overall. Finally, the article explains how several modifications may improve the PGR so that it can more legitimately and equitably play the role it already plays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a challenge in teaching early modern philosophy to balance historical faithfulness to the arguments and concerns of early modern philosophers and interpreting them as relevant to the kinds of thinking that contemporary undergraduate students find plausible. Early modern philosophy is unique, however, in applying modern scientific method directly to problems concerning nonphysical aspects of reality that our contemporary scientific thought, and with it mainstream contemporary culture, no longer find amenable in their own, independent right to reliable reasoned approaches. At the same time, early modern philosophy often also takes seriously purely conceptual or logically consequential thought in the investigation of these topics, as our mainstream contemporary culture does not. This kind of thought, we argue, is distinctive of philosophy in general and appropriate to nonphysical aspects of reality. Early modern philosophy, then, offers a bridge between the kind of reasoned, objective thought our mainstream culture finds plausible and thought about nonphysical reality or, in general, the thought that characterizes philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many reasons to include texts written by women in early modern philosophy courses. The most obvious one is accuracy: women helped to shape the philosophical landscape of the time. Thus, to craft a syllabus that wholly excludes women is to give students an inaccurate picture of the early modern period. Since it seems safe to assume that we all aim for accuracy, this should be reason enough to include women writers in our courses. This article nonetheless offers an additional reason: when students are exposed to philosophical texts written by women, they learn that women have been, are, and can be philosophers. Given how underrepresented women are in philosophy, this finding is significant. If we aim to change the face of philosophy-so that it includes more women-we must include texts written by women in our syllabi. The article considers various obstacles faced by those who work to respond to this call to action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The articles in the symposium 'Teaching Early Modern Philosophy: New Approaches' provide theoretical reflections and practical advice on new ways of teaching undergraduate survey courses in early modern philosophy. This introduction lays out the rationale for the symposium and summarizes the articles that compose it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pedagogical situations require white lies: in teaching philosophy we make decisions about what to omit, what to emphasise, and what to distort. This article considers when it is permissible to distort the historical record, arguing for a tempered respect for the historical facts. It focuses on the rationalist/empiricist distinction, which still frames most undergraduate early modern courses despite failing to capture the intellectual history of that period. It draws an analogy with Michael Strevens's view on idealisation in causal explanation to distinguish between myths and caricatures. Myths are distortions of the historical record that undermine students' understanding of the past, despite having other pedagogical benefits (being illuminative of some other period, or helping uptake of philosophical skills and methods). Caricatures are distortions that either increase or are indifferent to understanding of the past. Mythmaking, the article argues, is unjustified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A personal narrative is presented in which author shares his experience of learning philosophy from Peter Geach, philosopher and former Emeritus Professor of philosophical logic at the University of Leed in England.

This guide accompanies the following article(s): Aaron Meskin, 'The Philosophy of Comics'. Philosophy Compass 6/12 (2011): 854-64. doi: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2011.00450.x Author's Introduction Comics have been around since at least the middle of the 19th century, but they are just beginning to receive philosophical attention. Much of this recent philosophical work has focused on the definition of comics and their relation to other art forms (specifically film and literature), but recent work on such topics as narrative in comics, comics authorship, the relationship between words and pictures, and the interpretation of comics shows that there are a range of interesting issues to be explored. Although comics are not essentially a mass or popular art, the vast majority of them are examples of those categories. Hence, comics may be investigated in their own right or as paradigmatic examples of the mass or popular. Author Recommends Carrier, David. The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 2000. The first book-length discussion of comics by an analytic philosopher. Discusses the relation between comics and caricature, identifies three putatively necessary features of comics, addresses the interpretation of comics, and concludes by arguing that comics are a posthistorical art. Carroll, Noël. A Philosophy of Mass Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. An examination and defense of mass or popular art by a leading aesthetician. Carroll, Noël. 'The Paradox of Junk Fiction.' Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 335-47. Offers an account of why we are interested in the largely predictable stories that are found in popular narrative fictions such as comics. Eisner, Will. Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse Press, 1985. An illustrated introduction to comics by one of the masters of the field. (Eisner was a prolific author and illustrator of comics who produced the syndicated strip The Spirit as well as A Contract With God and numerous other graphic novels.) Heer, Jeet and Kent Worcester, eds. Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2004. A useful collection of essays on comics by important twentieth century literary and art figures such as Umberto Eco, Clement Greenberg, C. L. R. James, Thomas Mann, Gilbert Seldes and Robert Warshow. Levinson, Jerrold. 'Hybrid Art Forms.' The Journal of Aesthetic Education 18.4 (1984): 5-13. Offers an account of hybrid art forms - a category to which comics belong. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. An outstanding introduction to comics in comic form by a well-respected comics artist. Meskin, Aaron. 'Defining Comics.' The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65.4 (2007): 369-79. Argues that all extant attempts to define comics are flawed and that definition is not required for philosophical investigation of the form. Meskin, Aaron and Roy T. Cook, eds. The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. [See ] An anthology of philosophical essays which address the aesthetic issues raised by comics including the nature of comics authorship, genre, the word-image relation, the ontology of comics, the relation between comics and other art forms, humour and comics, and the idea of a language of comics. Includes a lengthy introduction which addresses the history of comics as well as the history of philosophical theorizing about them. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor's Tale. 2 vols. New York, Pantheon, 1986 and 1991. Widely accepted as a masterpiece of the form and awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Hugely influential - both on comic-making and on theorizing about comics. Online Materials Syllabus Note: Most weeks include both non-philosophical and philosophical readings as well as a suggested comic (or film). Week I: Introduction to Comics and the Philosophy of Comics Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art. Meskin. 'The Philosophy of Comics.' Philosophy Compass 6/12 (2011): 854-64. doi: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2011.00450.x. Kivy, Peter. 'Differences.' The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51.2 (1993): 123-32. Suggested Comic: Brunetti, Ivan, ed. An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006. Week II: The Definition of Comics McCloud, Understanding Comics (chapters 1 and 2). Meskin, 'Defining Comics?'. Cook, Roy T. 'Do Comics Require Pictures? Or Why Batman #663 Is a Comic.' Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69.3 (2011): 285-96. Suggested Comic: Spiegelman, Art. Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@*!. New York: Pantheon, 2008. Week III: Storytelling in Comics McCloud, Understanding Comics (chapters 3 and 4). Pratt, Henry John. 'Narrative in Comics.' The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67.1 (2009): 107-17. Suggested Comic: Moore, Alan and David Gibbons. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1995. Week IV: Pictures and Words McCloud, Understanding Comics (chapter 6). Carrier, The Aesthetics of Comics (chapter 4). Wartenberg, Thomas E. 'Wordy Pictures: Theorizing the Relationship between Word and Text in Comics.' In Meskin and Cook 2012. Suggested Comic: Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2004. Week V: Comics and Literature Chute, Hillary. 'Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative.' PMLA 123.2 (2008): 452-65. Meskin, Aaron. 'Comics as Literature?' British Journal of Aesthetics 49.3 (2009): 219-39. Carrier, David. 'Proust's In Search of Lost Time: The Comics Version.' In Meskin and Cook 2012. Suggested Comic: Simmonds, Posy. Gemma Bovary. London: Jonathan Cape, 2001. Week VI: Comics and Film Moore, Alan. Writing for Comics: Vol. 1. Rantoul, IL: Avatar Press, 2007 (chapter 1). Pratt, Henry John. 'Making Comics into Films.' In Meskin and Cook 2012. Cook, Roy T. 'Why Comics Are Not Films: Metacomics and Medium-Specific Conventions.' In Meskin and Cook 2012. Suggested Film: Snyder, Zack (Director). Watchmen. United States, Warner Bros., 2009. Week VII: Intentions and Interpretation in Comics Seldes, Gilbert. 'The Krazy Kat That Walks by Himself.' In Heer and Worcester 2004. Cummings, E. E. 'A Foreword to Krazy.' In Heer and Worcester 2004. Warshow, Robert. 'Woofed with Dreams.' In Heer and Worcester 2004. Carrier, The Aesthetics of Comics (chapters 5 and 6). Gracyk, Theodore. 'Allusion and Intention in Popular Art.' Philosophy and the Interpretation of Pop Culture. Eds. William Irwin and Jorge J. E. Gracia. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Suggested Comic: Herriman, George. Krazy Kat. (Many strips are available online and in a variety of publications. See, for example, Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman by Patrick McDonnell, Karen O'Connell and Georgia Riley de Havenon. New York: Abradale Press, 1999.) Week VIII: Criticizing and Evaluating Comics Wolk, Douglas. 'What's Good about Bad Comics and What's Bad About Good Comics.' Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press, 2007. Walton, Kendall. 'Categories of Art.' Philosophical Review 79.3 (1970): 334-67. Carroll, 'The Paradox of Junk Fiction.' Suggested Comic: Bechdel, Alison, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006. Focus Questions Can there be a distinctive philosophy of comics? What distinctive philosophical issues do comics raise?, Can comics be successfully defined? How important is a definition of comics? Does good comics criticism require a definition? Does successful theorizing about comics require one?, How do comics tell stories? Do comics tell stories differently from films and novels?, Is there a distinctive way words and images are related in comics? Do the pictures in comics illustrate the words?, How do comics relate to other art forms? Are some (or all) comics literature? Or are comics more akin to films than ordinary books?, Does the interpretation of typical comics differ from the interpretation of 'high' art such as painting and serious literature? Do the intentions of authors and artists matter to the interpretation of comics?, What makes a good comic? What makes a bad comic? Are these merely matters of opinion? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers the motivation for organising a conference on philosophy as it is practised across several faculties and departments at the University of Cambridge. It also offers an overview of the main themes that emerge in the essays collected in this issue of Metaphilosophy, which derive from the aforementioned conference. In particular it focuses on the risk of scholasticism and dogmatism that philosophy faces when it divorces itself from its own history, other disciplines, and real life. It then discusses the potential problems that can arise from the practice of philosophy in close conjunction with other disciplines, such as the natural sciences and the history of philosophy. Finally, it briefly comments on how institutional/academic structures have an influence on the way philosophy is practised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a comparative survey of the works and endeavours of two sixteenth-century humanist scholars: the Italian Alessandro Piccolomini and the Spaniard Pedro Simón Abril. Within a period of about forty years, they undertook a rather similar enterprise, with the aim of making the basis of Aristotelian philosophy available in their respective vernacular languages (Tuscan and Castilian). The idea is to look for both common features and differences between their proposals, taking in account that both authors developed alternative pedagogic programmes aiming at a better diffusion of basic philosophical lore among people who would not attend university courses (including an explicit mention of women, in Piccolomini's case). In a period of profound epistemic polemics with a characteristically rich variety of opinions about the reorganization of the sciences and the disciplines, their particular innovations and methodologies, may reveal new trends and possibilities which, despite being neglected by their contemporaries, did in fact offer a real alternative to current curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epistemologies of situated knowledges, advanced by scholars such as Donna Haraway, Lorraine Code, and Maureen Ford, challenge mainstream epistemology's claim to be the gold standard in determining what counts as knowledge. In this essay, James Lang uses the work of these and other feminist theorists to explicate the notion of situated knowledges and then uses this notion to trouble the legitimacy of employing Kantian-inspired propositional rationalism to justify all knowledge claims. Lang challenges the notions of the discrete, objective, impartial, interchangeable subject and the static passivity of objects of knowing. He demonstrates the inevitable involvement of the subjective in knowledge construction and justification; he claims that knowledge is necessarily embodied, partial, and situated and, further, that its construction, claiming, and enacting are activities with moral and political ramifications. Finally, Lang shows that re-visioning contexts of education through lenses of epistemologies of situated knowledges reveals a vastly expanded moral landscape with significant implications for educators, students, and educational theorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's insights on the declination of humanities in universities, considering philosophical explanations. He says that the identity of gender, sexual orientation, and politics has taken the place of rational discussion and objective scholarship. The author argues that although the kind of philosophy in trend is of the assistance for answering the question's job, the logical positivism popular in-between of the 20th century aimed to provide firm bases for knowledge.

Strangely, the concept of philosophical education is not much in use, at least not as a philosophical concept. In this essay, Steinar Bøyum attempts to outline such a philosophical concept of philosophical education. Bøyum uses Plato's Allegory of the Cave, René Descartes's life of doubt, and Immanuel Kant's criticism of metaphysics as paradigms or defining examples of this concept. Bøyum's aim in this essay is not exegetical; rather, he hopes to describe these examples in a way that will let their character as conceptions of philosophical education show forth. His underlying aims are to show which forms such conceptions may take and why philosophical education is or should be an important topic for both philosophy and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two humanities professors shift from the rut of readings, memorization, and papers to having students ask personalized questions and make concepts relevant outside the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leszek Kolakowski, who died in 2009, was professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and a fellow of All Souls College at Oxford University. His critical, magisterial study of the history of Marxism and his perpetual doubt and self-questioning, which led to a preoccupation with “the revenge of the sacred” in secular life, earned him a reputation as modern Europe's Erasmus. Just after he published Modernity on Endless Trial in 1991, Kolakowski sat down with me in his study at All Souls College. The following conversation was also published in Kolakowski's last book, My Correct Views on Everything. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La Revue des deux mondes (1895)Translated by Alla Zayenchik and Nir Buchler [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review essay J.J. Chambliss assesses the current state of the field of philosophy of education through analysis of four recent edited compilations: Randall Curren’s A Companion to Philosophy of Education; Nigel Blake, Paul Smeyers, Richard Smith, and Paul Standish’s The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Education; Wilfred Carr’s The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Philosophy of Education; and Randall Curren’s Philosophy of Education: An Anthology. He considers how these books address the question of what constitutes philosophy of education, with specific reference to the approach each takes to two topics: feminism and practical reason. Then, taking as a starting point Carr’s insight that a revised history of the philosophy of education could help us better understand the discipline, Chambliss traces the evolution of philosophy of education in the United States from the discipline’s origins, dominated by a tension between Empiricism and Idealism; to the “schools of philosophy” approach — that is, applying a set of beliefs derived from a particular philosophical school to education — that prevailed through the mid-twentieth century; to the wide-ranging contemporary work in the field that draws from newer methodologies and philosophical research programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gustav Radbruch is one of the most important German-speaking philosophers of law of the twentieth century. This paper raises the question of how to classify Radbruch's theories in the international context of legal philosophy and philosophy in general. Radbruch's work was mainly influenced by the southwest German school of Neo-Kantianism, represented by Windelband, Rickert, and Lask. Their theories of culture and value show an affirmative-holistic understanding of philosophy as a source of wisdom and meaningfulness. Kant, on the other hand, belongs more to a fundamentally different, critical camp of philosophy. Although Radbruch has incorporated Kantian Elements into his theory, he is rather a member of the affirmative-holistic camp. In the end the question will be raised as to what ought to be preserved of his philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the theory of mental content. According to the author, his hypothesis could lead to the vindication of some belief. As to presence, he claims that the best way to bring it into view is to begin with perception. As to presentation and representation, he questions whether human beings are born to be producers of presence, or just samplers of it. He also asks the actuality of natural representations, and if there is a need of a characteristic pattern of causation in order for such a natural representation to be of or about a certain original item.

Humeans believe that at least some of our desires give us reasons for action. This view is widely accepted by social scientists and has some following among philosophers. In recent years important objections were raised against this position by Scanlon, Dancy, and others. The foundations of the Humean view have never been properly defended. In the first part of the paper I discuss some objections to the Humean position. In the second part I attempt to provide an argument for the claim that the Humean view gives us a plausible, even if not exclusive, understanding of our notion of reasons. The particular version of the Humean view I set out to defend is that only desires that the agent is not alienated from, and that are not impulses, are reason giving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of the problem of evil presuppose and appeal to axiological and metaethical assumptions, but seldom pay adequate attention to those assumptions. I argue that certain theories of value are consistent with theistic answers to the argument from evil and that several other well-known theories of value, such as hedonism, are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with theism. Although moral realism is the subject of lively debate in contemporary philosophy, almost all standard discussions of the problem of evil presuppose the truth of moral realism. I explain the implications of several nonrealist theories of value for the problem of evil and argue that, if nonrealism is true, then we need to rethink and re-frame the entire discussion about the problem of evil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’ is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.” (Kenny Rogers) How should one understand knowledge- wh ascriptions? That is, how should one understand claims such as “I know where the car is parked,” which feature an interrogative complement? The received view is that knowledge- wh reduces to knowledge that p, where p happens to be the answer to the question Q denoted by the wh-clause. I will argue that knowledge- wh includes the question—to know- wh is to know that p, as the answer to Q. I will then argue that knowledge- that includes a contextually implicit question. I will conclude that knowledge is a question-relative state. Knowing is knowing the answer, and whether one knows the answer depends (in part) on the question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Richardson (2002, 2004) argues that Nietzsche’s use of teleological notions, such as the “will to power” and psychological “drives,” can be naturalized within the Darwinian framework of natural selection. Although this ambitious project has merit, the Darwinian framework does not provide the strong teleology necessary to interpret Nietzsche’s explanatory project. Examining the logic of selection, the conceptual limitations on biological functions, and the evidential demands that must be met to deploy evolutionary theory show that Nietzsche’s explanatory project does not cohere with the Darwinian framework. Thus, coherence with currently accepted evolutionary theory should not constrain the philosophical project of interpretation in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success of a piece of behaviour is often explained by its being caused by a true representation (similarly, failure falsity). In some simple organisms, success is just survival and reproduction. Scientists explain why a piece of behaviour helped the organism to survive and reproduce by adverting to the behaviour’s having been caused by a true representation. That usage should, if possible, be vindicated by an adequate naturalistic theory of content. Teleosemantics cannot do so, when it is applied to simple representing systems (Godfrey-Smith 1996). Here it is argued that the teleosemantic approach to content should therefore be modified, not abandoned, at least for simple representing systems. The new ‘infotel-semantics’ adds an input condition to the output condition offered by teleosemantics, recognising that it is constitutive of content in a simple representing system that the tokening of a representation should correlate probabilistically with the obtaining of its specific evolutionary success condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the philosophy of David Hume and the logic of philosophical causation. The author states that Humean causation must be located in local qualities in our spatiotemporal existence. The author is responding to philosopher John Hawthorne and takes issue with his analysis of causation and intrinsicness.

The article discusses the "inverse gambler's fallacy" proposed by the philosopher Ian Hacking. The author focuses on the implicit premises of the gambler fallacy. The author contends that if the premise is absent from a likely reconstruction of a similar situation, then an argument based on that similar situation does not commit the fallacy.

There is a tendency in philosophical discussions to see beliefs as belonging to specific people—to see things in terms of “your” belief, or “my” belief, or “Smith's” belief. I call this “personal attachment to beliefs.” This mindset is unconscious, deeply ingrained, and a powerful background stance in discussion and thinking. Attachment has a negative impact on the quality of philosophical discussion and learning: difficulties in acknowledging error and changing beliefs, blindness to new evidence, difficulties in understanding new ideas, entrenchment in views, rancorous behavior, and the encouragement of competitive personal contests rather than collaborative searches for the truth. This article investigates the nature of attachment and traces out some of the undesirable consequences for classroom philosophical discussion, thinking, writing, and learning. It presents an alternative model to attachment and offers constructive suggestions for implementing the results of the investigation in the philosophy classroom and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study in the quantitative history of philosophy. The paper aims to study why is compatibilism is popular in the history of philosophy by pursuing a rather different naturalistic methodology. The study determines the basic philosophical background of interest and then give a general methodological account of how a quantitative history of philosophy might proceed.

The article offers the author's insights on the contentions by philosopher Alvin Goldman on whether intelligent design (ID) should be taught in public schools. He says that ID defenders will likely consider Goldman's argument as invalid. He states that a positive part of Goldman's position is his defense of a knowledge-based approach to academic decisions and the decision regarding ID's inclusion in the curriculum.

This paper has three objectives. First, to provide an exposition of the 'realist turn' in contemporary organization and management studies. Second, to assess the detailed implications of this incipient 'realist turn' for the underlying explanatory principles and practices that should inform organization and management studies as a social scientific field. Third, to evaluate the potential, longer-term, impact of these explanatory principles and practices in an intellectual context where anti-realist ontologies and epistemologies have been dominant. This will entail a critique of contemporary approaches that draw on a social constructionist ontology and a postmodernist epistemology. Overall, the paper concludes that the 'realist turn' creates a significant intellectual opportunity and space in which the historical sociology of dynamic organizational forms and managerial control regimes can be rediscovered and renewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors suggest that the uses of critical realism in management and organization studies have been overstated by Michael Reed in an article published elsewhere in the same issue of the journal. The authors describe Reed's assertion that critical realism offers a new direction, but claim that his approach offers little that is innovative. They also charge that Reed's approach provides no evidence that the world is, in fact, as critical realism would suggest it is. The article includes an in-depth discussion of philosophical, ontological, and epistemological issues bearing on the debate.

The author, Michael Reed, answers critical questions raised by A. Contu and H. Wilmott about Reed's article "The Realist Turn in Organization and Management Studies," published elsewhere in the same issue of the journal. Reed refutes the assertion that the explanatory powers of critical realism were overstated. He explains that the critical realist philosophy of science provides a theory and model for social science and offers a point by point rebuttal of the criticisms made by Contu and Wilmott. The author also questions the intellectual standing of his critics and chides them for lack of clarity.

The authors discusses aspects of philosophy, one of the academic disciplines that is being dominated by men. Topics discussed include gender differences and its impact on philosophy courses, the role of innate aptitude in human achievements, and the role of unusual inborn abilities in discipline and academic pursuits.

Describes five techniques that heighten student thinking and involvement in class discussion in philosophy. Encouragement of students' personal responses; Juxtaposing different ways of knowing and composing.

The article offers the author's insights regarding Johann Gottlieb Fichte and his philosophical activity. He notes that Fichte published no systematic account of the "Wissenshaftslehre" and his systems discloses no consistently employed system of terms or categories, which were not appreciated by his Anglo-American students. He mentions the notion of Fichte that the role of philosophy should present the truth.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including experimental approach for teaching lean philosophy; a new type of online learning system to teach SQL; and students' overconfidence in statistics and financial mathematics exams.

A bibliography on the subject of pilosophy and education is presented which includes the books " Important Nonsense," by Lionel Abel, "The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson," by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and "Deconstruction and Philosophy," edited by John Sallis.