I’ve been giving some thought to explanations lately. As a teacher and as the parent of a five-year-old, I spend a lot of time explaining things, and I’ve been wondering a bit about what makes a good explanation. I’m talking here about explaining why things happen the way they do - explaining what the heck [...]
If there is one philosophical device I am absolutely sick to death of, it’s the dialogue. Apparently some writers figure that no one wants to read a boring treatise about some kind of abstract theory. So instead, they write a boring play in which multiple characters debate the abstract theory through stilted dialogue. Maybe it’s [...]
Another education class tonight, and I’m trying to process everything that we discussed. It’s weird - the economic disparities underlying education in this country, and the way those play into racial/ethnic distinctions, seems like an undercurrent of the class, and something that’s very much on the mind of the professor. But it’s not being brought [...]
Warning: This post contains spoilers for the video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic!
I couldn’t decide whether to file this under Philosophy or Culture & Media, but figured that the more interesting material is the philosophical questions touched on by the media, so I went with Philosophy. And it’s a good way to [...]
Happy New Year, everyone. I’m gonna try and get back on the horse with a post I’ve been mulling over for far too long.
I’ve talked before about the idea of deliberative democracy – that people should have a great deal of political power, but that they must provide reasons to each other for the decisions [...]
Lemme just point you over to a discussion on hyper-textual ontology about the concept of “natural ability” and its relationship to effort, level of interest, and those things about ourselves that we generally feel like we have some control over. In the comments, I press the notion that “natural ability” means something. But on an [...]
Peter Levine offers a cautionary tale on his blog about service learning programs in education. Levine sees such programs as a valuable tool for building the skills that people would need to be deliberative citizens - he sees a direct connection between a method of educating and a particular kind of political environment. He sees [...]
A quick link to Philosophy, Etc., and a post that discusses the burning question of what kind of contribution philosophers should try to make to the public discourse.
A couple of bloggers mention Dewey in the context of the role of religion in today’s world. Thoughts from Kansas discusses a Washington Post article where physics is called a “secular ideology” along with capitalism and communism. Josh Rosenau brings up Barack Obama’s recent speech on religion (which I really need to discuss in its [...]
Those interested in the ethics of genetic screening of embryos should head over to hyper-textual ontology or Technoprogressive, where Robn’s started an interesting thread. I’ve already started commenting in the h-t o thread, so I’ll just point you over there and encourage you to join in.