Philosophy with children across boundaries

Purpose: This study sought to examine the role of intuition in philosophical inquiry. Methodology: The study adopted a desktop research methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library. Findings: The findings reveal that there exists a contextual and methodological gap relating to the role of intuition in philosophical inquiry. Preliminary empirical review revealed that philosophers frequently relied on intuition as a heuristic tool for generating hypotheses and evaluating arguments. The study also highlighted significant cross-cultural variations in the conceptualization and utilization of intuition in philosophical reasoning. Moreover, neuroscientific methods revealed the neural mechanisms underlying intuitive processing during philosophical tasks. Overall, the study deepened our understanding of the complexities of philosophical inquiry and identified avenues for future research to enhance the quality and rigor of philosophical research. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The Reflective Equilibrium theory, Foundationalism and Coherentism may be used to anchor future studies on the role of intuition in philosophical inquiry. The study made several recommendations, contributing to theory, practice, and policy. It suggested further exploration into the nature of intuition, including its cognitive mechanisms and neural correlates, and recommended integrating empirical methods into philosophical research. Additionally, the study emphasized the importance of cultivating metacognitive awareness among philosophers and promoting ethical guidelines for the responsible use of intuition in research and dissemination. It also advocated for the integration of diverse perspectives and voices in philosophical inquiry to foster inclusivity and enrich discourse. Overall, these recommendations aimed to advance theoretical understanding, inform practical interventions, and guide policy initiatives in the field of philosophical inquiry. Keywords: Intuition, Philosophical Inquiry, Metacognitive Awareness, Ethical Guidelines, Cognitive Mechanisms, Neural Correlates, Interdisciplinary, Diversity, Inclusivity, Discourse, Responsible, Advancement

The crisis of 2009 has not proved to be a great impetus for new critical redirection of political and economic thinking in the West: both politico-economic structures in the West and the models of development and democratisation at the heart of Western foreign policy agendas remain much the same. This is despite the continued efforts of critical and philosophical IR theorists to push ‘critical thinking’ and ‘alternative agendas’ in world politics. Why the dismal ‘real-world’ failure of critical and philosophical IR research? This piece reflects on the trends towards depoliticisation, fragmentation and de-concretisation of critical and philosophical IR research and suggests some potential ways forward in reorienting critical and philosophical research in the field.

At present the basic intellectual aim of academic inquiry is to improve knowledge. Much of the structure, the whole character, of academic inquiry, in universities all over the world, is shaped by the adoption of this as the basic intellectual aim. But, judged from the standpoint of making a contribution to human welfare, to the quality of human life, academic inquiry of this type, devoted, in the first instance, to the pursuit of knowledge, is grossly and damagingly irrational. Three of four of the most elementary and uncontroversial rules of rational problem solving conceivable are violated. This rarely noticed, damaging, structural irrationality in current academic inquiry stems from the 18th century Enlightenment. In seeking to learn from scientific progress how humanity might make social progress towards a wiser, more enlightened world, Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet et al. blundered; these blunders were developed throughout the 19th century, and built into the institutional structure of academic inquiry in the 20th century with the creation of diverse branches of social science. In order to create a kind of academic inquiry free of these blunders, devoted in a genuinely rational way to helping promote human welfare by intellectual and educational means, we need to bring about a major revolution in the overall aims and methods of inquiry, in its whole institutional and intellectual structure and character. The basic intellectual aim needs to become to promote wisdom - wisdom being understood to be the capacity to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others (and thus including knowledge, know-how and understanding). The social sciences need to become social philosophy, or social methodology, devoted to promoting more cooperatively rational solving of conflicts and problems of living in the world. Social inquiry, so pursued, would be intellectually more fundamental than natural science. The natural sciences need to recognize three domains of discussion: evidence, theories, and aims. Problems concerning research aims need to be discussed by both scientists and non-scientists alike, involving as they do questions concerning social priorities and values. Philosophy needs to become the sustained rational exploration of our most fundamental problems of understanding; it also needs to take up the task of discovering how we may improve our personal, institutional and global aims and methods in life, so that what is of value in life may be realized more successfully. Education needs to change so that problems of living become more fundamental than problems of knowledge, the basic aim of education being to learn how to acquire wisdom in life. Academic inquiry as a whole needs to become somewhat like a people's civil service, having just sufficient power to retain its independence and integrity, doing for people, openly, what civil services are supposed to do, in secret, for governments. These and many other changes, affecting every branch and aspect of academic inquiry, all result from replacing the aim to acquire knowledge by the aim to promote wisdom by cooperatively rational means.

The making of musical instruments is an ancient human pursuit. However, to a large extent, this art-form has evaded academic and philosophical enquiry. Most of the theoretical work on the subject is illustrative and includes technical or practical approaches. This article links the building of classical guitars, or luthiery, in a South African and global manifestation, with the writings of hermeneutic thinker Hans-Georg Gadamer. It will investigate notions of experience, authority and tradition relating to luthiery. Interviews with selected South African luthiers will be used to substantiate the relevance of Gadamer’s thoughts to luthiery.

The growing popularity of less familiar methodologies in medical education research, and the use of related data collection methods, has made it timely to revisit some basic assumptions regarding knowledge and evidence. This paper outlines four major research paradigms and examines the methodological questions that underpin the development of knowledge through medical education research. This paper explores the rationale behind different research designs, and shows how the underlying research philosophy of a study can directly influence what is captured and reported. It also explores the interpretivist perspective in some depth to show how less familiar paradigm perspectives can provide useful insights to the complex questions generated by modern healthcare practice. This paper concludes that the quality of research is defined by the integrity and transparency of the research philosophy and methods, rather than the superiority of any one paradigm. By demonstrating that different methodological approaches deliberately include and exclude different types of data, this paper highlights how competing knowledge philosophies have practical implications for the findings of a study.

The Flourishing of Virtual Seminars: Strengthening the Globalization of Research Through <scp>SOL</scp> Seminars Online

Survey-based research plays a critical role in academic inquiry, offering valuable insights into human behavior,perceptions, and experiences. However, declining response rates have emerged as a significant methodological concern,threatening the validity and generalizability of research findings. This paper explores what constitutes an optimal survey responserate in contemporary academic research and examines the key factors contributing to low participation. Drawing from existingliterature and best practices, the paper evaluates current strategies used to improve response rates, including survey design,communication techniques, timing, and incentive models. Furthermore, it introduces a strategic framework aimed at enhancingparticipation while maintaining ethical standards. The discussion addresses the practical challenges of implementing thesestrategies across diverse research contexts and offers recommendations for both individual researchers and academicinstitutions. By synthesizing evidence-based approaches and proposing a flexible response optimization model, the papercontributes to the ongoing effort to improve the quality and reliability of academic survey research.

As I argued in Chap. 5, action research has some claim to be a form of research that brings research and practice into the most intimate relationship. It is easy to see or to represent action research as something standing in contrast with, or, more strongly, in opposition to, more theoretical or philosophical approaches to, for example, classroom practice. However, it will be my contention that this would be a serious error. Not only does action research itself depend on all sorts of philosophical premises for its own rationale, but, properly conceived it also requires its practitioners to reflect on their own educational philosophies, as well as to inquire empirically into the consequences of their actions. The chapter is structured by the distinction that I drew in Chap. 7 between (i) philosophy of research and (ii) philosophy in research. Philosophy of research refers to the ideas, rooted perhaps in epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy, which might underlie the idea and practice of action research, but of which action researchers themselves do not necessarily have to be aware. Philosophy in research refers to the ways in which, arguably at least, action researchers (among others) need to engage more self-consciously with philosophical questions. In developing this second argument, I shall draw extensively on the work of John Elliott, a philosopher who played a central role in the development of action research and someone who always regarded the two fields of educational inquiry as mutually dependent.

The Call: Leo Strauss on Heidegger, Secularization, and Revelation

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Jürgen Habermas and the Public Intellectual in Modern Democratic Life

Reviewed by: Africa and Its Diaspora: History, Identities, and Economy ed. by Samuel O. Oloruntoba Nana Afua Y. Brantuo BOOK REVIEW of Oloruntoba, Samuel O., ed. 2017. Africa and Its Diaspora: History, Identities, and Economy. Austin, Texas: Pan-African University Press. 400 pp. Adorning the cover of Samuel O. Oloruntoba's edited collection, Africa and Its Diaspora: History, Identities and Economy, is a simple design—a map of Africa resting on top of a pattern akin to that of textiles woven throughout the African continent. Within the map, several words capture the themes of this monograph. The word diaspora, the biggest and boldest in font, is centered and surrounded by development, history, slavery, identity, immigrant, and other words. The cover, in its aesthetic consistency and deliberateness, functions as shorthand for the book's focus on reorienting the conceptualization and study of the African diaspora as grounded in Paul Zeleza's (2005) definition of diaspora as process, condition, space, and discourse.1 This collection and synthesis of papers from more than two dozen scholars of African and African diasporic studies foregrounds the significance of mirroring the complexity and multiplicity of African diasporic life and experiences in academic exploration and inquiry. Movement and mobility, and the myriad phenomena borne out of the two, are no strangers to the African diaspora, which, spanning time and place, occupies a distinct, multidimensional space within diaspora studies. Africa and Its Diaspora, published by Pan-African University Press—a platform dedicated to revitalizing discourse related to Africa and the African diaspora—functions as both an academic and a political project, which centers the perspectives of African and African diasporic scholars across fields and disciplines. Divided into five parts, it delves into aspects of development at the micro and macro levels: politics of identity and belonging, [End Page 144] the legacies of and challenges posed by slavery and colonialism, the arts and development, religion and development, and alternative development strategies. The chapters within each section employ various methods and methodologies in an attempt to give nuance to their respective populations and topics of inquiry. Section one brings forth a theme of resilience and (re)creation at both the individual and collective levels of the diaspora by way of biographical, ethnographic, philosophical, and survey research, while section two utilizes historical, archival, archaeological, and anthropological methods to approach and reapproach the effects of slavery and colonialism on and off the African continent. Sections three, four, and five take on several spheres of development. In section three, various artistic mediums form the basis of postcolonial discourse and analysis of sociopolitical and sociohistorical African and African diaspora experiences. Section four focuses on multiple ways in which religion, past and present, has influenced the social, physical, and political infrastructures of West African societies. The book concludes with a focus on alternative development strategies, addressing the causes of contemporary forced migration out of Africa, resituating traditional economic systems in place of microcredit and microfinance schemes, and other topics. This section includes discourse on the role of youth in development, the necessity of African integration in resolving complex political, economic, and social issues, and the need to critique and discard the neoliberal development agenda throughout Africa. Overall, this volume makes space for necessary discourse on the past, present, and future for Africa and the African diaspora, offering historical and contemporary analyses alongside proposed recommendations and resolutions for ongoing issues affecting African and African diaspora communities across borders. While the cohesion of the chapters may seem challenged by variation in the communities of focus, the volume in and of itself exhibits the continuum of identities across Africa and the African diaspora, regardless of point of departure, return, or transition. Nana Afua Y. Brantuo University of Maryland, College Park note 1. Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. 2005. "Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic." African Affairs 104, no. 414 (2005): 35–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3518632. Copyright © 2019 The Trustees of Indiana University

There are significant inequalities in the lives of America’s children, including inequalities in the education that these children receive. These educational inequalities include not only disparities in funding per pupil but also in class size, teacher qualification, and resources such as books, labs, libraries, computers, and curriculum, as well as the physical condition of the school and the safety of students within it. While not all schools attended by poor children are bad schools, and not all schools attended by well-off children are good schools, there are clear patterns. Poor children are more likely to attend crowded and poorly equipped schools with less qualified teachers than the children of more affluent families. They are less likely to have computers, books, and advanced placement academic courses. To give one example of the differences in school resources, the wealthiest districts in New York spent more than $25,000 per pupil at the same

Reviewed by: The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry ed. by Koen Vermeir, Michael Funk Deckard Iain Hampsher-Monk Koen Vermeir and Michael Funk Deckard, editors. The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry. International Archives of the History of Ideas, 206. Dordrecht-New York: Springer, 2012. Pp. xxii + 337. Cloth $139.00. Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful was born of his youthful ambitions for literary fame, ambitions he had to compromise by entering politics to support himself and his young family. It is the one work of systematic philosophy from an author whose greater fame derived from his attack on the philosophical politics of the French revolution and its English sympathizers. As such it has held an important place—not only in the history of aesthetics through its influence on Kant—but increasingly for historians of political ideas looking to systematize his otherwise topical political writings. For Burke, neither aesthetics nor “political philosophy” had the distinct genre-identities they now possess: the work was rather a contribution to the recently emerged field of “Criticism and Belles Lettres,” with valences to a range of subject areas we would often now recognize as distinct—physiology, psychology, literary criticism, rhetoric, politics, even, whisper it, cultural studies. This volume of fifteen essays claims to be the first entirely devoted to the work, and the editors, while drawing attention to the diversity of genres and interpretations with which it has been identified, argue for “a science of sensitivity” as the node of a range of mid-century preoccupations and disciplines—philosophical, medical, and literary—that occasioned a burst of essays on what we now call aesthetics. In Part I, Science and Sensibility, Steffan Ducheyne discusses the Enquiry’s deployment of Newtonian methodology; Joseph Pippin III identifies a knowable objective metaphysics in the Enquiry, which, he claims, confirms the neo-Aristotelian against the Lockean reading of Burke; Aris Sarafinos’s fine essay shows the wider physiological and even meteorological context of the material grounding Burke gives his concept of sensibility; and Herman Parret pursues Burke’s reputation forward into the German-speaking world, more particularly Herder’s critique of Burke for failing to systematize the somatic basis of sensibility, to which they both subscribed. In Part II, Sensibility, Morals and Manners, the German reception is further pursued by Bart Vandenabeele’s discussion of Kant’s response to, and differences with, Burke, agreeing with him on the social character of aesthetic experience, but rejecting Burke’s view that any universal claims can be found in, or drawn from, its purely empirical sources. F. P. Locke’s “Politics of Burke’s Enquiry” argues it is a mistake to assume there are any—urging readers take seriously the terms ‘philosophical’ and ‘enquiry’ in the title. It is, in origin and conception, a work of “genuine intellectual curiosity.” Dan O’Neill, by contrast, argues that, even setting aside its possible relationship to later works, the Enquiry is “on its own an important work of political theory,” while Paddy Bullard assures us a scholarly consensus exists denying important connections between Reflections and the Enquiry, before turning his attention to the Miltonic references in the Enquiry. A preoccupation with the literary features of the work (Bullard, Ryan, De Bruyn, Saint Perinetti, Girons) is not confined to the last section, Aesthetics and the Science of Sensibility. Burke’s claim about the greater power of the Sublime is clearly borne out by its dominance as a theme here, and central to many is the tracing of the filiations of the Sublime from its origins in Longinus—or even earlier (Cressida Ryan), or forward to contemporary aesthetics (Girons: “the revenge of obscurity”). But the classical is not the only literary lineage discussed: K. O’Donnell reads the work as grounded in an oral, Erse culture—a Gaelic sublime; while others draw attention to the Bible and indeed the relation between the Biblical and classical sublime (Paddy Bullard). Among the best contributions bringing together the literary and the historical are Dario Perinetti’s philosophically subtle and well-contextualized discussion of the relationship between Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste” and...

The article examines the increased interest in the phenomenon of intuition in the digital age. According to the authors, the use of intuition as a heuristic tool for generating ideas, hypothesizing and evaluating arguments within the framework of philosophical and scientific knowledge is the most important task of modern individuals. In an effort to analyze the conditions under which intuition will contribute to improving the quality of scientific and philosophical research, the authors show various interpretations of the concept of “intuition” in the history of philosophy, highlighting the complexity and versatility of this phenomenon. Intuition, according to the authors, serves as a voice of the unconscious, to which the reins of rationality and critical thinking are applied. Amidst a crisis of rationality, intuition emerges as an irrational impulse that problematizes existing knowledge, thereby facilitating the production of new hypothetical insights. The aim of the article is to conduct a philosophical analysis of the risks associated with the application of intuition in the process of cognition, while simultaneously expanding the potential applicability of intuition in the digital world. Methodological basis of the research incorporates elements of historical-philosophical reconstruction, philosophical questioning, and employs both a systemic approach and methods of philosophical analysis. Following the point of view of coherence, the authors suggest that intuitive judgments embedded within a broader system of propositions contribute to structuring philosophical and scientific arguments in a coherent sequence. The authors conclude that intuition in the era of digitalization is a valuable heuristic tool associated with the level of development of metacognitive awareness, with the work of productive imagination and critical thinking. These processes together enable the utilization of intuition as a starting point for further analysis of problems, thus increasing its effectiveness and minimizing the risks of erroneous decisions.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) document entitled “Tolerance Today: A Philosophical Inquiry” presented at the Official Closing Ceremony of the XIX World Congress of Philosophy held in Moscow in August 1993, echoed Director-General Federico Mayor’s published lament that violence is now global and intense, and harmony threatened, mainly because people no longer perceive that “the ability to value each and every person is the ethical basis for peace, security and intercultural dialogue.” Finally, Mayor concluded in that document, “it is intolerable that tolerance itself remains the most important item on the agenda of building democracy and a culture of peace in today’s world.” Mayor’s speech and the document released to the World Congress of Philosophy closing session cite only the all-too-lamentable effects of global violence and neglects the causes. But to simply state that the opposite of tolerance, “intolerance” is the cause, is much too general and can hardly be termed “Philosophical Inquiry” (as the sessions were entitled). Rather than “intolerance,” which is too passive a word for the cause of something as devastating as violence, the more accurate term would be pornography, a “pornography of relationships” underlying attitudes which have today become (as Mayor said) “global and intense” (UNESCO).