This schedule, provided as a companion to my “Teaching Firefly” article, was used for a sophomore level philosophy course that was populated mostly by non-majors. The original idea for the course was to develop a popular culture philosophy course that would attract students from all over campus, which was meant to both introduce them to multiple philosophical ideas and theories and hopefully convince some of them to major or minor in philosophy. The course was quite successful at drawing Whedon fans (...) from across the university (after a certain amount of advertising through posters and social media). Students were very engaged with both discussions of episodes and the readings. (shrink)

Understanding the ways in which Muslims are turned into “a problem” requires an analytic incorporating the insights gained through the concepts of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism into a larger frame. The “Muslim Question” can provide such a frame by attending to the systematic character of this form of racism, explored here through biopolitics. This article develops a conceptualization of Europe’s “Muslim Question” along three lines. First, the “Muslim Question” emerges as an accusation of being an “alien body” to the nation, (...) often expressed through the Trojan horse legend. Second, the “Muslim Question” is elaborated through demands of integration and assimilation, in which the production of difference entangles with calls and measures to regulate Muslims. And third, the “Muslim Question” is brought to life upon the terrain of gender and sexuality, as the imaginary of threat at the heart of the “Muslim Question” is a replacement conspiracy centered on birthrates. (shrink)

Philosophers unknowingly subscribe to two competing conceptions of philosophy. On the inclusive conception, teaching philosophy provides a valuable social good that should be distributed as much as possible. On the traditionalist conception, certain materials and techniques constitute the way philosophy should be taught, which must be conserved. Unfortunately, the traditionalist conception clings to methods that have repeatedly produced an elitist, hierarchal version of philosophy that inhibits diverse engagement. Given the value of philosophy, philosophers have a duty to distribute philosophy to (...) a greater number of people, which requires embracing the inclusive conception. Acting towards this duty can be done by working beyond the classroom, spreading philosophy through service, and improving our teaching both to reach a more diverse audience and to follow pedagogical research, such as with experiential learning techniques. Philosophers should also ensure that the duty’s burden falls more on privileged philosophers who can take on the necessary sacrifices. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

In this book Irving Zeitlin re-examines the work of this important philosopher and considers how we should assess Nietzsche's claims today.

... Press for their editorial perspicacity, to the National Institutes of Health for the partial financial support they gave me while I was writing some of the chapters, and to Donald Michie for suggesting the title Good Thinking.

La siempre fascínate escritura rulfiana continúa dialogando con el mundo. El así conocido “escritor de las letras mexicanas”, nos sigue ofreciendo un mar de posibilidades de acercamiento a otras áreas humanísticas entre las cuáles incluimos a la filosofía. Coincidentes en la época y en la geografía mexicana, Juan Rulfo y María Zambrano se encontraron en 1939. Exponentes ejemplares y creadores de nuevos caminos en la escritura literaria y filosófica, los exponemos como paralelos a través de dos piezas claves de sus (...) obras: Pedro Páramo y Los sueños y el tiempo. La antropología zambraniana viene propuesta como uno de estos senderos creativos y creadores de la búsqueda del propio ser y del sentido mismo del existir. Dicho pronunciamiento antropológico lo exponemos como perspectiva de lectura del viaje no sólo de Juan preciado, ansioso buscador de su padre, sino de todos los lectores de Rulfo que hemos tejido con sus letras —extractoras de sueños y productoras de anhelos— la frágil cuerda que sostiene la aventura del descubrir nuestro lugar en el oscuro pozo del mundo. Realismo mágico y Razón poética en armonía propositiva que revela el origen de ambos proveniente de la misma semilla del ser. Rulfo y Zambrano nos enseñan que hay encuentros más profundos y reales que aquellos sólo históricos. (shrink)

There are obvious benefits to be gained from the study of logic: heightened ability to express ideas clearly and concisely, increased skill in defining one's terms, enlarged capacity to formulate arguments rigorously and to analyze them critically. But the greatest benefit, in my judgment, is the recognition that reason can be applied in every aspect of human affairs.

While virtually everyone recognizes the moral permissibility of whistleblowing under certain circumstances, most theorists offer relatively conservative accounts of when it is allowed, and are reluctant to offer a full recommendation of the practice as an important tool towards addressing ethical failures in the workplace. We think that accounts such as these tend to overestimate the importance of professional or personal obligations, and underestimate the moral obligation to shine light on severe professional malfeasance. Of course, a whistleblower, even an anonymous (...) one, often faces serious threats of retaliation and harm to their professional livelihoods and well-being. To address these challenges we argue in favor of a practice that we will call Preemptive Anonymous Whistleblowing (PAW). Such whistleblowing is preemptive in that a whistleblower provides information about malfeasance to a party in a position to do something about it without first raising the worry to one’s immediate superiors. At first blush, such preemption may seem unsettling, and PAW admittedly raises a number of worrisome issues. We defend PAW, however, as part of a larger argument that whistleblowing is morally required more often than is commonly thought. The availability of PAW as an option provides a method for allaying the concern that whistleblowing can be overly burdensome due to the risks of job and career. Insofar as that concern can be allayed, it is feasible for there to be substantial moral requirements to engage in whistleblowing in cases where severe harms can be prevented. With high enough stakes, there is a moral requirement for whistleblowing. (shrink)

The question whether compulsory schooling is justifiable or not has been treated at considerable length by critics, defenders, and positions in-between. What these treatments—about paternalism and autonomy and institutionalization and more—have not directly analyzed is a question that precedes the issue of overall justification: the preliminary question of time. Does it matter when compulsion takes place? Furthermore, does the timing of compulsion matter to the question of overall justification? I will argue that it does matter, but for reasons not directly (...) related to the question of overall justification. (shrink)

Deep beneath the Jack the Ripper story, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell use From Hell to argue for a philosophical thesis: Although physical violence and structural violence are quite different, they are also interconnected as each causes the other to worsen. William Gull claims that through the Ripper murders, he has “delivered” the twentieth century, as seen in his premonition of the mundane office place. In other words, Gull believes that the Ripper murders somehow played a foundational role in creating (...) twentieth-century life. This premonition suggests that horrific murders like those of the Ripper make structural violence, such as that found in the contemporary office place through wrongs such as sexual harassment, recede into the background of society where it becomes invisible and taken for granted. As Gull sees his violence as particularly connected to his misogynist worldview, From Hell makes the clearest case for the connection between physical violence and structural violence through the problem of patriarchy. (shrink)

Is there room for philosophy in educational research? Is there phenomenology before and beyond its uses and abuses in the applied and social sciences? How are phenomenology and philosophy of education related? What are the methods for phenomenology within the field of philosophy of education? These talks to educational scholars and researchers responds to these questions and appeals for place of philosophy within educational research and the tradition of phenomenology within philosophy of education. Across a genealogy of thought and frequent (...) autobiographical confessions, this book of lectures works from the simple insight that philosophy and education are not so different. (shrink)

Our paper serves as an introduction to a budding field: the philosophy of mind-wandering. We begin with a philosophical critique of the standard psychological definitions of mind-wandering as task-unrelated or stimulus-independent. Although these definitions have helped bring mind-wandering research onto centre stage in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, they have substantial limitations that researchers must overcome to move forward. Specifically, the standard definitions do not account for (i) the dynamics of mind wandering, (ii) task-unrelated thought that does not qualify as mind-wandering, (...) and (iii) the ways that mind-wandering can be task-related. We then survey three philosophical accounts that improve upon the current psychological definitions. We first present our account of mind-wandering as “unguided thinking”. Next we review Thomas Metzinger’s view that mind-wandering can be defined as thought lacking meta-awareness and cognitive agency, as well as Peter Carruthers’s and Fabian Dorsch’s definitions of mind-wandering as disunified thinking. We argue that these latter views are inadequate, and we show that our definition of mind-wandering as unguided thinking is not only conceptually and phenomenologically precise but also can be operationalized in a principled way for empirical research. (shrink)

In this work, we focus on the problem of selecting low-level heuristics in a hyperheuristic approach with offline learning, for the solution of instances of different problem domains. The objective is to improve the performance of the offline hyperheuristic approach, identifying equivalence classes in a set of instances of different problems and selecting the best performing heuristics in each of them. A methodology is proposed as the first step of a set of instances of all problems, and the generic characteristics (...) of each instance and the performance of the heuristics in each one of them are considered to define the vectors of characteristics and make a grouping of classes. Metalearning with statistical tests is used to select the heuristics for each class. Finally, we used the Naive Bayes to test the set instances with k-fold cross-validation, and we compared all results statistically with the best-known values. In this research, the methodology was tested by applying it to the problems of capacitated vehicle routing and graph coloring. The experimental results show that the proposed methodology can improve the performance of the offline hyperheuristic approach, correctly identifying the classes of instances and applying the appropriate heuristics in each case. This is based on the statistical comparison of the results obtained with those of the state of the art of each instance. (shrink)

The Politics of Constructionism presents a broadranging and critical overview of the many themes of social constructionism and its relevance to contemporary social and political issues. Clearly structured and bringing together leading international contributors from across the social sciences, it offers an invaluable may through this rich body of literature. Major questions and topics explored in its critique and application of constructionist ideas include the theory and practice of scientific method, the development of social and political policy, the use of (...) social science statistical methods, self-identity and the politics of collective identities, and technological advances in reproductive medicine. Drawing on insights from psychology, sociology, politics, philosophy, cultural, gender, and social studies, The Politics of Constructionism links the discourse of constructionism to the wider social and political world and offers much to suggest that, contrary to the final impoverishment claimed by some of postmodernism, social science is witnessing the beginning of a new enrichment. It will be essential reading for all students and academics interested in social constructionism and contemporary issues and debates across the social sciences. (shrink)

Esta obra colectiva expone diversas concepciones teóricas, ontológicas, epistemológicas, axiológicas y prácticas sobre el origen, sentido, problemáticas, ventajas, detrimentos, alternativas y desafías de la filosofía de la innovación y su incidencia en la educación; reflexiona sobre las contribuciones de la tecnología y responde a interrogantes como: ¿Cuáles son los aporte de la tradición filosófica, del pensamiento ilustrado, de la postmodernidad y de la teoría crítica para la filosofía de la innovación educativa?; ¿Cuál es la función de la filosofía para la (...) comprensión de la innovación?; ¿Cómo se explica el progreso tecno-científico desde la epistemología contemporánea?; ¿Cuál es el componente pedagógico de la innovación?; ¿Cuáles son las aportaciones del Laudato Si para la innovación educativa?. Además, plantea la necesidad de repensar algunos aspectos relacionados con la educación, el Estado y la identidad latinoamericana para determinar las posibilidades, las limitaciones y los retos de la innovación, entendida como un fenómeno en permanente construcción. Este tomo se encuentra conformado por ocho capítulos en los que los autores formulan un conjunto de contribuciones para la generación de nuevas investigaciones. Además, evidencia a la innovación como un procesos que exige reformulaciones. La innovación sigue siendo una de las tareas pendientes de la filosofía. (shrink)

O presente artigo traz reflexões que envolvem infância e experiência a partir da área da educação e, particularmente, das ponderações em torno das pesquisas com crianças pequenas e da educação infantil. Os apontamentos impõem limites relativos a este lugar de estudo e delimita estes como parte de uma crítica e autocrítica da educação e das possibilidades de consolidação de uma Pedagogia da Infância. Nesta direção, no artigo se toma para esta reflexão a análise do sentido da experiência para as principais (...) teorias educacionais ou projetos educativos para a educação na infância, a fim de levar a uma demarcação dos contornos da experiência educativa na/da infância institucionalizada. Para tal, apresenta alguns elementos relativos à experiência educativa como experiência social a partir de estudos empíricos que dão visibilidade às ações das crianças como parte de suas vidas nos coletivos infantis. Por fim, indica como desafios para a possível consolidação de uma Pedagogia da Infância uma aproximação da Pedagogia às manifestações infantis, a criança em situação e as possibilidades de os processos educativos se pautarem na escuta, na dialogicidade e nas relações, possibilitando incluir, nas práticas educativas, as significações produzidas pelas próprias crianças em seus contextos de vida e suas manifestações culturais e expressivas. (shrink)

Introduction to Logic is a proven textbook that has been honed through the collaborative efforts of many scholars over the last five decades. Its scrupulous attention to detail and precision in exposition and explanation is matched by the greatest accuracy in all associated detail. In addition, it continues to capture student interest through its personalized human setting and current examples. The 14th Edition of Introduction to Logic, written by Copi, Cohen & McMahon, is dedicated to the many thousands of students (...) and their teachers - at hundreds of universities in the United States and around the world - who have used its fundamental methods and techniques of correct reasoning in their everyday lives. (shrink)

Social science research, whether observational or interventional, is confronted with situations where the dignity of participants and respect for cultural practices can be seriously affected. The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, we will reflect on the ethical challenges facing social science research with special consideration of research in contexts of vulnerability. Secondly, we will propose the Kantian sense of respect as a normative framework to guide social science research.

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar las aportaciones que los avances en neuroética tienen en la toma de decisiones en las empresas. Empezaremos por cuestionar el paradigma dominante de la toma de decisiones empresariales desde el análisis crítico de los presupuestos epistemológicos de la teoría económica liberal, así como desde las perspectivas de las ciencias cognitivas y sus aportaciones al análisis del comportamiento humano. Continuaremos presentando dos grandes modelos de toma de decisiones éticas que se basan en la creación (...) de sentido intuitivo y que tienen sus fundamentos en los avances de las neurociencias. Concluiremos con breves observaciones críticas. (shrink)

Los acelerados cambios científicos tecnológicos y sociales exigen de los centros de Educación Superior la búsqueda de nuevas vías y el perfeccionamiento de las ya existentes para lograr egresados más competentes. La tutoría se identifica como un proceso educativo que debe favorecer el pleno desarrollo personal e integral del estudiante, en el que éste se conciba como sujeto activo y responsable de su propio proceso de formación. En este sentido cobra una especial importancia el proceso de interacción en el desarrollo (...) de la tutoría. El artículo tiene como objetivo fundamentar la importancia de dicha interacción, mediante un breve análisis teórico y la exposición de algunos resultados de su diagnóstico en el contexto de tres carreras universitarias. The accelerated social, scientific and technological changes demand of Higher Education centers, the search for new ways to create more competent graduates, as well as to improve the existing ones. Tutorship is identified as a teaching process that must favour the complete personal and comprehensive development of the student, in which he must be seen as an active individual responsible for his own formative process. This way, the interactive process of developing tutorship takes on special significance. This article aims at supporting the importance of such interaction, by means of a brief theoretical analysis and by setting out some results of its diagnostic in the context of three university degree courses. (shrink)