Community Of Philosophical Inquiry Research Articles

A Wittgensteinian Perspective on the Multidimensionality of Truth in the Community of Philosophical Inquiry

A Wittgensteinian Perspective on the Multidimensionality of Truth in the Community of Philosophical Inquiry

The limits to dialogue

ABSTRACT The great hope of dialogical pedagogy such as the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI) as advocated for by practitioners of philosophy for and with children (P4C) was to cultivate critical thinkers who would be guided by epistemic and moral virtues in their engagement with one another in an effort to uncover truth. And, further, that those democratic citizens could then take these newly honed skills out into the public square and enact good decision-making in their lives. The focus on equality and inclusion, with a respect for diversity of thought and opinion, guided a sense that every participant should feel as though they ‘belong’, and were free to engage in dialogue with others as equals. And yet, the question about how we might ensure the CoPI is a space in which everyone can meaningfully contribute is forefront in my mind. In this paper, I will focus on what might limit dialogue by explicating three main issues which I call ‘paying lip service’, ‘existing power dynamics’ and ‘the transfer problem’. I will see if I can respond to these in order to ultimately affirm the role for dialogical pedagogy to support radical listening and genuinely inclusive dialogue.

Attentiveness, qualities of listening and the listener in the community of philosophical inquiry

This paper seeks to redress a predominant focus on speaking over listening in theorising the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). Frequently, where listening is discussed, the focus is on encouraging children to be active listeners. This means of describing the listening that occurs in the CPI has lost some efficacy as the language of active listening has been co-opted as a management technique focussed on making the speaker feel heard with little emphasis on the intentions or outcomes for the listener. Thus, on a cynical reading, ‘active listening’ can become reduced to performative physical indicators of listening (such as eye contact and body language), overlooking the ethical-epistemic commitments of the genuinely engaged listener. Here, rather than formulating new terms to describe listening, I propose Iris Murdoch’s account of attentiveness as an apt descriptor of the effects of truly involved listening on the self that seeks to attend to the unfolding content of the CPI and as a way of characterising the qualities of a CPI where such listening is achieved. Here, attentiveness is presented as a concept that captures the unique facets of listening as a challenge to individual participants concerned with contributing effectively to the dialogue as it unfolds within the CPI and those facilitating the dialogue. The paper briefly explores some implications for practice contexts, proposing three interventions to cultivate attentiveness in CPI participants and in facilitators (especially if they are undergraduate or postgraduate in Philosophy because philosophical identities might become a barrier to attentiveness). At its conclusion, this paper repositions listening in the CPI as a productive risk with a particular form of ‘aliveness’ aptly captured by the term attention.

Schooling, community of philosophical inquiry and a new sensibility

This paper seeks to reconstruct the role of schooling in a moment of accelerated social, political, economic, geo-political, climatic, indeed planetary crisis. It identifies the school as a potentially prefigurative institution, an evolutionary social frontier, capable of nurturing the democratic social character, a form of sensibility apart from which authentic political democracy is not possible. As theorized by Herbert Marcuse and Richard Hart and Antonio Negri, the “new sensibility” or “multitude” is characterized by greater psychological freedom, individuality, social creativity and self-rule, comprising a “whole of singularities” that “acts in common”. It suggests a human subject with a vital, biological drive for liberation, with a consciousness capable of breaking through the material as well as ideological veil of a society based on hierarchy and domination, and is associated politically with democracy and social-anarchism, or what Murray Bookchin called “communalism”. This paper identifies three main characteristics of an institution informed by this form of modal subjectivity, all of them based on student-teacher dialogue: an emergent, project-based curriculum, whole-school direct democratic governance on all levels of the community, and the regular practice of communal philosophical inquiry, through which we problematize the concepts we live by, in the interest of their ongoing reconstruction.

Ann sharp’s concept of personhood and the spiritual dimension of the community of philosophical inquiry

In this paper, I critically explore Ann Sharp’s conception of personhood as it figures in the theory and practice of the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI). Through surveying Sharp’s rich and varied philosophical output, it will be shown how Sharp’s conception of personhood as a trilateral relationship (between self, other(s), and community) maps onto “the Three C’s” of critical, creative, and caring thinking that make up the practice of Philosophy for Children. After thus presenting Sharp’s conception of personhood, the paper brings into view an aspect of said conception which could benefit from further development. This potential shortfall in Sharp’s thought is identified as “the problem of closure”. In highlighting the problem of closure, I will indicate how Sharp marshals the concept of faith in her conception of CPI as a spiritual community, a relationship that is coincident with personhood itself, as it stands for the bond that ties together the individual (self and other(s)) and the collective (community) dimensions of CPI. I argue that faith serves, among other things, as an agent of closure between the individual and the collective in Sharp’s thought. In considering the function of faith in CPI, I will suggest an avenue of possible resolution to the problem of closure in Leonard Nelson’s conception of “the Socratic spirit” as the embodiment of “reason’s self-confidence”. Finally, the paper looks ahead to David Kennedy’s writings on the intentionality structure that governs the relationship between the individual and the collective in CPI as a resource that promises to offer a more rigorous and systematic treatment of the problem of closure.

Existential urgency: a provocation to thinking “different”

In this essay we expand the notion of thinking by emphasizing the provocation and urgency to think and by reconceptualizing thinking as an embodied practice. The aim is to expand Lipman and Sharp’s approach to philosophical inquiry with children and show how other ways of thinking can be included. We strive to unfold a way of “thinking” that is both different from rationality (critical thinking) as well as from creative and caring thinking. In the first part of the paper, we discuss the merits of Lipman and Sharp’s critical, creative and caring thinking within the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). We then expand Lipman/Sharp’s philosophical method through Ekkehart Marten’s Five-finger Model, which allows for different philosophical approaches. In the second half of the paper, we draw on Martin Heidegger’s What is called thinking? to develop his concept of the “call” to think together with its related notions of provocation and urgency. Building on this, we draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty to show how this call is not an intellectual activity or mere exercise of the “mind” but rather affects our entire existence. As such, thinking becomes a response to an existential urgency that is an embodied practice. Using concepts like embodiment, affect, and sensibility, we try to widen our conception of thinking in a CPI. Finally, we hope this will allow facilitators to hear the unique voice of every child so that no one is left unheard.

Inverting questions: an invitation to take a stroll on another side of questions

This paper has two objectives: to explore how inverting questions in the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (Kennedy, 2004) can be a useful tool for triggering thought processes; and, more generally, to explore the importance of inverting the role traditionally given to children as bystanders to their own education and thought processes. On this basis, we will assume that children have an epistemic and political voice and that this voicing, placed on equal standing with the adult voice, is long overdue. It is undeniable that questions have a central role in P4C sessions (Costa-Carvalho E Mendonça, 2020; Costa-Carvalho E Kohan, 2020) and that, in the context of any given community of philosophical inquiry, they can trigger (Kennedy, 2004) a wide range of thought processes. Some questions may be too vague and require sharpening to adequately address the problem at hand, while others may promote a metacognitive approach to the issue under discussion, and to the entire thought process that sustains it. We will explore how inverting questions may be useful in this context. Moreover, we will consider how this thought anastrophé may emerge in concrete philosophical discussions with children. Our argument will, therefore, navigate the intersection between language and thought, logic and semantics, and theory and practice. Assuming that the term “inversion” may offer different understandings, we will try to outline this rhizomatic approach (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) to the concept. We will focus primarily on the child’s point of view, which we hold to be epistemologically privileged (Kennedy, 2020). It is our core belief that children´s voices should be granted scientific and political standing and that an epistemic inversion between adulthood and childhood in education must be explored.

Sobre el encuentro de las maestras con/en un ejercicio infantil de la filosofía

The purpose of this article is to present an ongoing research project that aims to uncover meanings about the figure of the teacher in the community of philosophical inquiry. What is unique about this figure? What constitutes this figure? How is this figure configured and reconfigured in her own practice? and how is she configured and reconfigured in her own practice? The article begins by describing what characterizes, defines or constitutes the figure of the teacher as facilitator outlined in the initial Philosophy for Children program. It also addresses some critical perspectives on the notion of facilitating and seeks to propose an alternative to the figure of the facilitator which, far from attempting to define a taxonomy of teaching philosophy with children or to establish a model of teacher, allows us to think of a figure of schoolmaster who is sensitive to encounters and who, through them, also finds other ways of being and doing. In this sense, a reflection is also proposed on what an educational encounter can mean and what is the place of schoolmasters in these encounters. Finally, some possible conditions of/for the encounter are proposed as starting points that allow us to promote and sustain the encounter, such conditions are: commonality, equality, listening and unpredictability.

Philosophy with Children

This article proposes that children’s voice is important. It also suggests that one way in which children’s voice might be supported is through Philosophy with Children. However, when teachers undertake Philosophy with Children to promote children’s voice, it is important that they reflect on their role and the practice to consider how that role and practice enable children’s voice. One way in which teachers might do this is by considering the seven factors for enabling children’s voice identified through the Look Who’s Talking project. The seven factors are as follows: definition, power, inclusivity, listening, time and space, approaches, processes and purposes. The article takes each element in turn to consider the ways in which Philosophy with Children might align with them and offers questions teachers may ask of themselves and their practice. As there is a range of approaches to Philosophy with Children, the article focuses on one model: Community of Philosophical Inquiry.

Philosophy for children as a form of spiritual education

In the last two decades, some authors in the philosophy for children movement have theorized that the community of philosophical inquiry can be a form of spiritual practice, of the care of the self, or a wisdom practice (De Marzio, 2009; Gregory, 2009, 2013, 2014;Gregory & Laverty, 2009). Yet, it is unclear if philosophy for children is, by itself, a form of spiritual education, or if it requires some sorts of modification to be one. And, if it is or can be a form of spiritual education, we can interrogate in what ways and to what extent is it one. It is these questions that this text aims to explore. To do so, we will first clarify the meaning of spiritual education through the presentation of two authors who have explicitly written on that topic. The first is Parker J. Palmer, who has developed a perspective on what it means to reclaim the spiritual roots of education, derived from his study and practice of Quaker spirituality. The second is Pierre Hadot, who has explored how the practice of philosophy in Western antiquity was a form of spiritual exercise. From our presentation of these two authors will emerge a particular perspective of what spiritual education means. In the last section of the text we will use this presentation to examine in what ways philosophy for children can be a form of spiritual education and if requires adaptations to be one.

Competitions and Community of Philosophical Inquiry: Compatible or not?

Philosophy contests proliferate today. The Philosophy Olympiads are the most common. In the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC) community there is some concern about a possible contradiction between the cooperative and community-centred approach to the practice of philosophy in education and the intrinsic rivalry of competitions. The arguments against these contests focus on their main risks. It is thought that they potentially reinforce the particularly harmful meritocratic educational system while simultaneously increasing inequality and reinforcing private education. Furthermore, the belief is that they promote destructive controversy where the goal is winning the debate. In Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI), however, notions exist that could potentially be favoured in these competitions. CoPI focuses on demanding and cooperative argumentative dialogue and encourage parresia, the assertive and reasoned defence of one’s ideas in adversarial contexts. Likewise, the Olympic principles promote fair play; the search for excellence and the ideals of isonomy, isegory and isokratia, fostering participant skills and values which are desirable from an educational, philosophical and democratic perspective.We consider that, from an educational perspective as well as from the Philosophy for Children educational approach, participation in competition is possible and even desirable if the negative aspects it might have are addressed.

Exploring Teachers' Responses to a Workshop for Developing Critical & Creative Thinking Through Storytelling

Current Malaysian educational policy requires school teachers to include critical and creative thinking in their classrooms; however, few teachers have been trained to do so. The research investigated an approach for developing teachers’ critical and creative thinking through story writing. Qualitative research methodology was employed to explore teachers' understanding and views of the program. The results yielded four main themes, namely: Benefits, Challenges, Satisfaction and Improvement of the Writing Thinking Stories (WTS) program. Participants acknowledged that the program presented new ways for teaching critical and creative thinking (CCT) in a meaningful environment. Some challenges included overcoming caution when being creative; integrating philosophical concepts into their stories and a lack of fluency in English resulting in some participants requesting the chance to write stories in their mother tongue in groups. There was general satisfaction with the program, although some participants expressed a need for training in Community of Philosophical Inquiry (COPI) prior to the program. All in all, the WTS program resulted in teachers successfully producing short thinking stories that integrated values and CCT in a fun and meaningful way.
 Keywords: Story writing, Critical and Creative thinking, community of philosophical inquiry

The Community of Philosophical Inquiry as a place of agon: Exploring children’s experiences of competitiveness in philosophical dialogue

This paper explores an important yet overlooked aspect of Philosophy for Children (P4C): how children experience competitiveness in the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). It describes a qualitative case study conducted with 76 young people (aged 8-17) involved in CPI dialogues in formal and informal educational settings in Canada and New Zealand. Interviews and video observation revealed that participants often experienced dialogues as competitive exchanges in which ‘winning’ consisted of convincing others, while giving in to others’ opinions was associated with defeat and disappointment. Participants recognised the potential dangers of competitiveness, notably the epistemic risk of excluding alternative perspectives and the social risk of damaging their relationships. Participants often successfully managed competitive dynamics by remaining engaged and open-minded. The last part of the paper discusses these findings in relation to theoretical work in P4C, notably Kennedy’s (1997) notion of the CPI as a ‘place of agon.’ Further, it argues that we should rethink the role of competitiveness in the CPI while remaining mindful of its risks, notably by considering its potential as a motivational drive and its place within a larger process of inquiry.

Collaborative, child-led philosophical inquiry in Religious and Moral Education

ABSTRACT Situated in the context of the Scottish Religious and Moral Education (RME) curriculum, this article considers the practice of Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI) and how it supports the RME curriculum. Sharing extracts from children’s CoPI sessions, the article reflects on the ways in which ten and eleven year-old children discuss religious and theological ideas philosophically. The child-led, collaborative approach demonstrates that the children work together to create meaning. It is proposed that the RME curriculum, or the enactment of the curriculum, often misses opportunities for children to engage with philosophical ideas about religious and theological concepts, and that an explicitly dialogic, philosophical approach affords important opportunities to support children’s self-understanding in-relation with the world and others.

Preparing youth for participatory civil society: A call for spiritual, communal, and pluralistic humanism in education with a focus on community of philosophical inquiry

To prepare youth for civil society, we need to expand the modern conception of humanism to a form of spiritual, communal, and pluralistic humanism that incorporates spirituality as a core dimension of human nature. Embedding these concepts in education involves three pillars—alignment with the spiritual and authentic self; community, interconnectedness, and service; and cherishing variety and pluralism—needed to prepare youth to create and sustain a harmonious, participatory civil society. We present a conceptual model for spiritual development and a practical model that invites pluralistic spirituality into education. We focus on the community of philosophical inquiry as another crucial layer that cultivates critical, creative, caring thinking and communal dialog, which are necessary to engage in a participatory civil society.

The story circle as a practice of democratic, critical inquiry

The authors of this essay have been committed practitioners and teachers of Philosophy for Children in a variety of educational settings, from pre-schools through university doctoral programs and in adult community and religious education programs. The promotion of critical thinking has always been a primary goal of this movement. But communal practices of critical thinking need to include other kinds of democratic conversation that prompt us to see others as full-fledged persons and to be curious about how our being in community with them makes growth and self-correction possible. As we continue to experiment and innovate in new contexts we see ourselves continuing the inquiry around expanding the inclusivity of conversations about basic human concerns. In this essay we describe an inclusive strategy called the story circle, that was first developed as a method of popular education in Denmark and was then adapted as a tool of social change among poor and dis-empowered American citizens in Appalachia. Story circles were later utilized in a philosophical living-learning community and most recently coupled with Lipman and Sharp’s dialogue method of the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI). The authors of this paper have combined story circles with the community of philosophical inquiry in a variety of contexts. In each iteration, telling one’s own story and listening carefully to the stories of others can be equally revelatory actions.

Que peut faire l’abduction dans le dialogue philosophique?

What Abduction can do in Philosophical Dialogue? According to Peirce, abduction is a hypothetic-forming process that is necessary to explore unknown areas of knowledge, but also a real scientific method associated with the enquiry. If there is philosophical enquiry, could abduction serve as an appropriate method for such an approach? If so, how can it be used and with a view to what result(s)? We ask whether abduction can bring a potential both for discovery and a logical requirement to the philosophical questioning. In this paper we focus on a philosophy that "is done", in the form of a common enquiry, the "community of philosophical inquiry". The present research explores the advantages and limitations of requiring such a method, in the context of the practice under study. Keywords: abduction, method, philosophical inquiry, inference, unknown

Expérimenter la pensée en schémas-images. Des adolescents s’interrogent « d’où viennent les pensées ? »

"Experimenting Thinking in Image Schemas. Teenagers are Wondering “Where Do Thoughts Come From?” An intellectual view of philosophy as an activity focusing on understanding abstract concepts and their relationships deprives philosophical exercise of the participation of the body and senses. If we reject the mind-body dualism, as Dewey, Johnson, etc. did, then we are constantly engaged in interactions with the world and others, and can thus consider the act of thinking from our own experiences. Inspired by an experimentalist conception of school and life, as well as the method of inquiry developed by Dewey, the Philosophy for Children program provides an inquiry process that invites participants to conceptualize and reason philosophically in a collaborative manner. Do these practices implement an embodied cognition? To find out, we selected a discussion as a case study and analyzed it based on the observation that the issue to be discussed by the participants - “where do thoughts come from?” contains two image schemas: path (come from) and source (where). We have noted a variety and a significant number of expressions (“they come from within”, “they come from what happens outside”, etc.) whose analysis enhances a better understanding of how an experience of understanding the origins of our thoughts fits into the discourse and contributes to a collective conceptualization of “thinking”. Keywords: image schemas, perceptual experience, conceptualisation, community of philosophical inquiry, experimentalism "

Sobre partos y nacimientos: derivas ético-políticas de la figura del “maestro-partero” en filosofía con/para niñxs.

In this paper, I endeavor to evaluate the ethical-political consequences of the metaphor of "teacher-midwife" awarded to Plato’s Socrates in Theaetetus and its use by different scholars to describe the role of teacher in a Philosophy with/for children (Pf/wC) context. The paper is divided into three sections: first (1) an approach is made to the figure of Socrates in Meno, to the critique of his method as expressed by Jacques Rancière in The Ignorant Schoolmaster, and to the echoing of that critique by Walter Kohan in his evaluation of the pedagogy of Pf/wC. Next, (2) different descriptions of the teacher’s role in Pf/wC are reviewed, emphasizing the elements that emphasize the Socratic figure. For Matthew Lipman, one of the keys to turning classrooms into communities of philosophical inquiry was to substantially modify the teaching role. Because, on Lipman’s account, the teacher should not teach in the traditional sense, different metaphors have been sought to describe her role. In section (3), I argue that a description of the teacher as "guide" can be applied to many features that characterize Socrates. I analyze in depth the metaphor of the "teacher-midwife" establishing the links with those developed in (1) and (2). Emphasis is placed on the ethical-political consequences of equating the teacher with a "teacher-midwife", especially if we take into account Plato's complete description of pedagogical maiusis in Theaetetus, and the centrality of the metaphor in Pf/wC pedagogical practice. Finally, I consider the very different image of the “birth” metaphor that is suggested by Hannah Arendt’s concept of “natality,” and explore its implications for a pedagogical alternative to the Socratic.

Is That a Philosophical Question? The Philosopher as Teacher

AbstractIn Philosophy for Children (P4C) theory there is a long‐standing commitment to democratizing the classroom. It is widely believed that to properly democratize the classroom question‐asking and question selection should be undertaken by the students rather than the adult facilitator. In practice, this commitment to democratization generates a tension. Asking and identifying philosophical questions is an acquired skill. For P4C practitioners, it is difficult to find a balance between the desire to democratize the classroom through a student‐centered P4C practice and the need to help students build philosophical skills. This paper examines theoretical approaches to question‐asking and question selection in P4C and, using examples from the classroom, considers possible solutions to the tension. The aim is a method that respects students’ epistemic authority and agency in the community of philosophical inquiry while enabling P4C practitioners to aid the students in developing the skills necessary for philosophical engagement.