Socratic Courage in Plato's Socratic Dialogues

This article considers Socrates's conception of courage in Plato's Socratic dialogues. Although the Laches, which is the only dialogue devoted in toto to a pursuit of the definition of courage, does not explicitly provide Socrates's definition of courage, I shall point out clues therein which contribute to an understanding of Socrates's conception of courage. The Protagoras is a peculiar dialogue in which Socrates himself offers a definition of courage. Attending to the dramatic structure and personalities of the dialogue, I will point out that Socrates does not commit to the definition and that the hedonism and the definition of courage are used to disclose Protagoras's confusion regarding virtue. Following one of the clues within the Laches I will turn to the Apology and indicate Socrates's conception of courage which is based on his awareness of lack of knowledge of death and his religious conviction that nothing will happen for the good in life or in death. Finally I will show that such conception of Socratic courage satisfies the criteria in the Laches.     

The A Priori and the Empirical in Theories of Emotion: Smedslund's “Conceptual Analysis” of Emotion

Abstract

This paper examines the suggestion made by Smedslund that the empirical laws of emotion proposed by Frijda are a priori necessities, derivable from a definition of emotion Smedslund proposes. First, a distinction is drawn between a causal and non-causal reading of Smedslund's own definition of emotion. The suggestion is made that although on the causal reading the definition might provide sufficient conditions for being in an emotional state, causal regularities are empirical, so this reading would not meet his own criteria for an a priori definition. Moreover, showing that Frijda's laws are derivable from the definition thus understood would not undermine their empirical status. The non-causal reading is then examined and questions are raised about whether it can provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a state to be a state of emotion. Finally, the suggestion is made that the central issue in the question of whether or not a theory of emotion is wholly empirical turns not on whether it can be derived from a definition of emotion, but, rather, on the extent to which the explanations proposed of the regularities governing emotions must appeal to a priori rationality constraints.     

Neat,Swine, Sheep,and Deer: Mill and Peirce on Natural Kinds

In the earliest phase of his logical investigations (1865–1870), Peirce adopts Mill's doctrine of real Kinds as discussed in the System of Logic and adapts it to the logical conceptions he was then developing. In Peirce's definition of natural class, a crucial role is played by the notion of information: a natural class is a class of which some non-analytical proposition is true. In Peirce's hands, Mill's distinction between connotative and non-connotative terms becomes a distinction between symbolic and informative and pseudo-symbolic and non-informative forms of representation. A symbol is for Peirce a representation which has information. Just as for Mill all names of Kind connote their being such, so for Peirce all symbols profess to correspond to a natural class.     

Parental interest in children's education,children's self‐esteem and locus of control,and later educational attainment: Twenty‐six year follow‐up of the 1970 British Birth Cohort

Background. Few studies have investigated if mother's interest and father's interest in child's education are linked to educational attainment via their impact on child's self‐esteem and locus of control. Aims. (1) To investigate (after controlling for known confounding factors) the long‐term effect of mother's and father's interest in child's education at age 10 and child's locus of control and self‐esteem at age 10 in educational attainment at age 26; and (2) to explore if mother's interest and father's interest in child's education are linked to child's educational attainment via their effect in increasing child's self‐esteem and internal locus of control. Sample. The study used longitudinal data from sweeps of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70). The initial sample was those 1,737 men and 2,033 women with valid data on age 10 self‐esteem, locus of control, father's interest, mother's interest, and age 26 educational attainment. Of these, 1,326 men and 1,578 women were included in the final analysis. Method. The birth to age 10 factors that were controlled for were birth weight, parental social class, socio‐economic disadvantage, emotional/behavioural problems, cognitive ability, and mother's educational attainment. Results. At the multivariate level, internal locus of control and mother's interest (but not self‐esteem) were significantly related to educational attainment in both men and women. Father's interest was a significant predictor of educational attainment only in women. Parent's interest was not linked to educational attainment via its impact on child's self‐esteem or locus of control. Self‐esteem predicted educational attainment in both genders by increasing internal locus of control, and fathers' interest predicted educational attainment in men by increasing mother's involvement. Conclusion. Although mothers' and fathers' interest in their children's education were not linked to educational attainment via their impact on children's self‐esteem or locus of control, they were significant predictors of educational attainment especially in daughters.     

Disagreement,Credences, and Outright Belief

This paper addresses a largely neglected question in ongoing debates over disagreement: what is the relation, if any, between disagreements involving credences (call them credal disagreements) and disagreements involving outright beliefs (call them full disagreements)? The first part of the paper offers some desiderata for an adequate account of credal and full disagreement. The second part of the paper argues that both phenomena can be subsumed under a schematic definition which goes as follows: A and B disagree if and only if the accuracy conditions of A's doxastic attitude are such that, if they were fulfilled, this would ipso facto make B's doxastic attitude inaccurate, or vice‐versa.     

REPUBLICS AND THEIR LOVES: REREADING CITY OF GOD 191

In City of God 19.24, Augustine rejects Cicero's definition of res publica as a society founded on justice for a new definition focused on common objects of love. Robert Markus, Oliver O'Donovan, and a host of Augustinian political theologians have depicted this move as a positive gesture toward secular society. Yet this reading fails to account for why Augustine waited so long to address Cicero's definition, first discussed in Book 2, and for the radical dualism Augustine sets forth between the two cities throughout his text. I argue, in line with Rowan Williams and John Milbank, for a minority reading of Book 19 that draws upon the narrative structure of City of God. In Books 3–5, Augustine recounts the history of the earthly city according to Rome's penchant for violence and idolatry, both a function of love for temporal goods. In Book 18, Augustine traces the history of the earthly city before Rome according to the same themes, completing a narrative argument that humanity has always been divided according to differing loves. Book 19 advances the idea that such idolatry is injustice—a failure to grant God the worship he is due. With the new definition of 19.24, Augustine retains Cicero's emphasis on the importance of virtue in civic society while characteristically shifting the terms of discussion from justice to love. While such a definition means that Rome can be called a res publica, it also prompts a negative judgment upon her history according to her objects of love. Given her violence and idolatry, Rome is no better than Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Greece—all subject to withering critique in Book 18. Thus, Augustine's new definition does not retract but extends the polemic of City of God.     

Organizational Resources for Addressing Sexual Harassment

The author acknowledges the difficulties in arriving at a definition of sexual harassment. Employing a definition that has become commonplace, she distinguishes between quid pro quo and hostile environment harassment. The obligations of organizations are outlined and attention is given to the development of appropriate policies and procedures. The effect of the organization's climate on institutional responsiveness to this issue is discussed, and pertinent educational and training interventions are provided.     

Heidegger on Ontological Education,or: How We Become What We Are

Heidegger presciently diagnosed the current crisis in higher education. Contemporary theorists like Bill Readings extend and update Heidegger's critique, documenting the increasing instrumentalization, professionalization, vocationalization, corporatization, and technologization of the modern university, the dissolution of its unifying and guiding ideals, and, consequently, the growing hyper-specialization and ruinous fragmentation of its departments. Unlike Heidegger, however, these critics do not recognize such disturbing trends as interlocking symptoms of an underlying ontological problem and so they provide no positive vision for the future of higher education. By understanding our educational crisis 'ontohistorically', Heidegger is able to develop an alternative, ontological conception of education which he hopes will help bring about a renaissance of the university. In a provocative reading of Plato's famous 'allegory of the cave', Heidegger excavates and appropriates the original Western educational ideal of Platonic paideia, outlining the pedagogy of an ontological education capable of directly challenging the 'technological understanding of being' he holds responsible for our contemporary educational crisis. This notion of ontological education can best be understood as a philosophical perfectionism, a re-essentialization of the currently empty ideal of educational 'excellence' by which Heidegger believes we can reconnect teaching to research and, ultimately, reunify and revitalize the university itself.     

Mary Wollstonecraft on Motherhood and Political Participation: An Overlooked Insight into Women's Subordination

Scholars consider Mary Wollstonecraft an early feminist political theorist for two reasons: (1) her explicit commitment to educational equality, and (2) her implicit suggestion that the private‐sphere role of motherhood holds political import. My reading of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman uses Wollstonecraft's works and draws upon recent claims made by Sandrine Bergès in The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft to connect these points: educated women are better at performing motherly duties and, therefore, of greater benefit to society. Although many scholars have read Wollstonecraft's arguments for educational equality as a starting point for greater equality, Bergès does not. In this article, I further Bergès's claims and argue that Wollstonecraft's project is limited and likely to reinforce inequality between the sexes. Specifically, I show that Wollstonecraft's educational reforms incentivize women to become nothing more than highly educated housewives. In the process of fulfilling their social and political duty to instill public spirit and private virtue in future citizens, women are re‐entrenched in domestic affairs instead of being freed for public pursuits. This realization, I contend, should cause us to be wary of panaceas for women's subordination that rest on increasing their education.     

Foundations of Educational Psychology: Howard Gardner's Neoclassical Psyche

This article is a theoretical examination of the implications of Howard Gardner's work in developmental and educational psychology (1983, 1993, 1999a, 1999b) for the structure of the psyche. The author accepts as axiomatic, in the context of this article, Gardner's educational manifesto (1999a) that all students should be taught disciplinary understandings of truth, beauty, and goodness. Rational inferences are then made indicating that the psyche that Gardner intends to educate and help develop is in the form of a neoclassical psyche and that it is structured by the capacities to know truth, to love beauty, and to will goodness.     

A critique of Vihvelin's Three-fold Classification

In this essay, I argue for the rejection of Vihvelin's ‘Three-fold Classification’ (3-FC), a nonstandard taxonomy of free-will compatibilism, incompatibilism, and impossibilism. Vihvelin is right that the standard taxonomy of these views is inadequate, and that a new taxonomy is needed to clarify the free-will debate. Significantly, Vihvelin notes that the standard formal definition of ‘incompatibilism’ does not capture the historically popular view that deterministic laws pose a threat to free will. Vihvelin's proposed solution is to redefine ‘incompatibilism.’ However, Vihvelin's formal definition of ‘incompatibilism’ is flawed according to her own arguments. In addition, Vihvelin's characterization of ‘compatibilism’ is (at best) incomplete, and at least two important free-will views are missing from her proposed taxonomy. Given the problems with Vihvelin's arguments for 3-FC, her novel view of the dialectic between the major free-will views lacks support.     

Teaching Elder: Erik H. Erickson

A renowned child psychoanalyst, Erik H. Erikson (1902–1994) is perhaps best known for his work on developmental theory (Childhood and Society, 1950) and his studies of the lives of Martin Luther (Young Man Luther, 1958) and Gandhi (Gandhi's Truth, 1969). Twice he found himself intensely engaged in the role of teacher – once as a young artist who had been called by a friend to help in the progressive school formed for the children of Sigmund and Anna Freud's patients in Vienna (1927–1932), and years later (1960–1970) as a tenured professor at Harvard. This essay describes Erickson's teaching experience in both settings and suggests some of the reasons he was honored by Harvard in 1980 as a “humane teacher.” Implications from Erikson's educational practice are drawn that demonstrate how Erikson moved beyond the rote memorization and authoritarian educational practice he experienced as a youth. The essay suggests Erikson's teaching stance at Harvard fits the author's theological tradition's use of the term “teaching elder.”     

The Japanese Tea Ceremony and Pancultural Definitions of Art

Dominic McIver Lopes and Yuriko Saito claim that the Japanese tea ceremony, or chadō, is a non‐Western art form. Stephen Davies also defends that claim. In this article, I utilize the tea ceremony as a test case for pancultural definitions of art that claim to be inclusive of non‐Western cultures without relying on Western ethnocentrism to justify their status as artworks. I argue that Davies's (2015) hybrid definition is not justified in assuming a homogenous art tradition and/or a unified conception of artistic practices in a non‐Western culture. Moreover, the cladistic structure of his definition fails to accommodate the spontaneous instantiation of new art traditions. Additionally, Jerrold Levinson's Intentional‐Historical definition cannot satisfactorily accommodate chadō. First, the nonart origins that were formative for the regard that is required for appreciation of the tea ceremony mean that the relational interpretation of the definition fails. Second, Rikyū’s tea ceremony does not count as art incidentally, as it is not a form of mimesis nor does the Japanese wabi aesthetic that is central to chadō have a precursor in known Western art. Third, if chadō does satisfy Levinson's extended theory, it comes at the cost of embracing Western ethnocentrism.     

Six-year-olds' perception of home literacy environment and its influence on children's literacy enjoyment,frequency, and early literacy skills

Home literacy environment (HLE) makes an important contribution to children's reading acquisition in early years. Even though some research on children's perception exists, children's reports about HLE have been neglected. The present study focuses on N = 281 six-year-old's reports about HLE and its influences on literacy enjoyment, frequency, and early literacy skills. Parents' educational background was expected to predict children-perceived HLE. A positive impact of active HLE on literacy enjoyment and frequency were found. HLE also mediates the relation between parents' background and enjoyment. The importance of children's perspective on HLE regarding family literacy programs is discussed.     

A Wild West of the Mind

§258 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is often seen as the core of his private language argument. While its role is certainly overinflated and it is a mistake to think that there is anything that could be called the private language argument, §258 is an important part of the private language sections of the Philosophical Investigations. As with so much of Wittgenstein's work, there are widely diverse interpretations of why exactly the private diarist's attempted ostensive definition fails. I argue for a version of the no-stage-setting interpretation of the failure of private ostension. On this interpretation, the reason why the diarist cannot establish a meaning for ‘S’ is that she lacks the conceptual-linguistic stage-setting needed to disambiguate the concentration of her attention (the private analogue of an ostensive definition). Thus, the problem with any subsequent use of ‘S’ is not that there is no criterion of correctness for remembering the meaning of ‘S’ correctly, or for re-identifying S correctly in the future. Rather, it is because of the initial failure to define ‘S’ that there is nothing that could count as a criterion of correctness for the future use of ‘S’; there is nothing to remember or re-identify. My argument for the no-stage-setting interpretation consists in showing how well it fits into the rest of the Philosophical Investigations and in defending it against objections from Robert J. Fogelin, Anthony Kenny, and most recently John V. Canfield. Kenny's and Canfield's objections are found to suffer from problems regarding memory scepticism.     

A Note on Saying Nothing and Saying More in the Tractatus

On the basis of an analysis of the relevant parts of Tractatus logico-philosophicus, a definition of the property (of propositions) of saying something, and of the obviously correlated property of saying nothing, is given. By applying that definition, both tautologies and contradictions are sanctioned as saying nothing, as lacking sense, in full agreement with Wittgenstein's explicit statements. On the other hand, a recent systematic attempt by A. Negro to extract from the Tractatus a criterion for sense containment and a criterion for saying more, that is, for comparing the amount of sense of propositions, leads to the conclusion that the sense of any proposition is contained in the sense of a contradiction and that contradictions say more than any other propositions. The problem faced in this paper is that of restoring consistency between Negro's criteria, which on the whole give a correct interpretation of the text of the Tractatus, and Wittgenstein's thesis that, not only tautologies, but also contradictions say nothing.     

Teaching and Self‐Formation: Why the Ignoble “Intro to World Religions” Really Matters

This paper explores the idea that the educational process plays a vital role in the formation and transformation of selves. Peter Hodgson's theological interpretation of education as paideia and Lucinda Huffaker's work on the achievement of “clarity of self” are brought together to demonstrate that empathy is central not only to evolution of self, but the educational process as well. The argument insists that introductory courses are places of immense potential for helping students in the lifelong task of achieving self‐clarity. The “Introduction to World Religions“ course is used as a practical illustration of the thesis.     

Affect,Desire, and Judgement in Spinoza's Account of Motivation

Two priority problems frustrate our understanding of Spinoza on desire [cupiditas]. The first problem concerns the relationship between desire and the other two primary affects, joy [laetitia] and sadness [tristitia]. Desire seems to be the oddball of this troika, not only because, contrary to the very definition of an affect (3d3; 3 General Definition of the Affects), desires do not themselves consist in changes in one's power of acting, but also because desire seems at once more and less basic than joy and sadness. The second problem concerns the priority of desires and evaluative judgements. While 3p9s and 3p39s suggest that evaluative judgements are (necessarily) posterior to desires, Andrew Youpa has recently argued that passages in Ethics 4 indicate that rational evaluative judgements can give rise to, rather than arise out of, desires. I aim to offer solutions to these problems that reveal the elegance and coherence of Spinoza's account of motivation. Ultimately, I argue that whereas emotions and desires stand in a non-reductive, symmetrical relationship to one another, evaluative judgements must be understood as asymmetrically dependent on, and reducible to, emotions or desires. This interpretation sheds light on our understanding of Spinoza's cognitivist account of emotion. For Spinoza, while emotions are representational, they are not underpinned by evaluative judgements. Rather than inflating emotions to include evaluative judgements, he deflates evaluative judgements, treating them as emotions, or valenced representations, and nothing more.     

Moral Realism and Program Explanation: A Very Short Symposium 1: Reply to Nelson

Donald Davidson once suggested that a liar ‘must intend to represent himself as believing what he does not’. In this paper I argue that, while Davidson was mistaken about lying in a few important respects, his main insight yields a very attractive definition of lying. Namely, you lie if and only if you say something that you do not believe and you intend to represent yourself as believing what you say. Moreover, I show that this Davidsonian definition can handle counter-examples that undercut four prominent definitions of lying: viz., the traditional intend-to-deceive definition, Thomas Carson's definition, Don Fallis's definition, and Andreas Stokke's definition.