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Philosophical Positions (philosophical + position)
Selected AbstractsIs there a place for individual subjectivity within a social constructionist epistemology?JOURNAL OF FAMILY THERAPY, Issue 4 2010Sim Roy-Chowdhury The epistemological turn towards social constructionism has become well established within the field of family systemic therapy. Social constructionism has provided therapists with a theoretical rationale for the concentration upon the social context within which individuals and families live their lives. This is a philosophical position that pushes to the margins the positivist premise that individuals have fixed and measurable personalities in favour of a discourse which proposes that the person is encountered differently within different social contexts. Prompted by the growing interest in systemic practice with individuals and by the rediscovery of the psychoanalytic canon within family therapy literature, the adequacy of this position is examined and an attempt is made to open up a space within social constructionist discourse for a theory of individual subjectivity. Findings from a research project are the starting point for this venture. These findings are understood through the lens of psychoanalytic theory, with particular reference to the work of Jacques Lacan. [source] Uncovering Cover Stories: Tensions and Entailments in the Development of Teacher KnowledgeCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 2 2005MARGARET R. OLSON ABSTRACT Building on the research of Crites in theology and Clandinin and Connelly in education, the authors map out three variations of cover stories lived and told by preservice and in-service teachers in order to clarify their scholarship and inform the research of others. We examine how these narratives are formed around canonical stories that teachers publicly claim to know (or show) and actually do know (but not as favored interpretations), and personally authorized stories that teachers publicly claim not to know (or show) but that they personally do know (as favored interpretations). We illustrate how this necessarily deceptive double storying may give rise to miseducative situations. We then offer our conceptualizations of knowledge communities and teachers' narrative authority as ways to create spaces for all stories to be reflectively heard and examined, and to address inherent challenges that arise when narrative knowledge goes unacknowledged because of pervasive sacred stories embedded in institutional prescriptions, stories of school, and competing philosophical positions. [source] The ,False Dualism' of Educational ResearchJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 2 2000Richard Pring Educational research is being subject to damaging criticism from both outside and within the research community. The external critics are impatient of research which does not give evidence-based answers to the questions they ask. The internal critics condemn the very research which seeks to provide those answers. These differences are reflected in the rigid distinction between quantitative and qualitative research. This paper questions the philosophical positions on which such a distinction relies. [source] China's Pragmatist Experiment in Democracy: Hu Shih's pragmatism and Dewey's Influence in ChinaMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 1-2 2004Sor-Hoon Tan Abstract: In the 1920s, John Dewey's followers in China, led by his student Hu Shih, attempted to put his pragmatism into practice in their quest for democracy. This essay compares Hu Shih's thought, especially his emphasis on pragmatism as method, with Dewey's philosophical positions and evaluates Hu's achievement as a pragmatist in the context of the tumultuous times he lived in. It assesses Hu's claim that the means to democracy lies in education rather than politics, since democracy as a way of life requires a cultural renewal beyond institutional changes. It argues that a problem-centered approach to social change does not preclude radical action, even revolution. But pragmatism is against gratuitous use of violence in the service of wholesale and abstract ideals advocated by various "isms." While Hu's experiment of democracy in China is a significant episode in the history of pragmatism, its "failure" does not prove that there are inherent flaws in the pragmatist method, that pragmatism is unviable for China. The failure needs to be understood in the context of the pragmatist conception of experiment, in which failures are to be expected; what is important is to learn from them to achieve better results in the next stage of inquiry. Hu Shih's pragmatism contains lessons for pragmatists and for those interested in the continued quest for democracy in China,the experiment continues. [source] Dialogue Foundations: Dialogue Logic Revisited: Erik C. W. KrabbeARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME, Issue 1 2001Erik C. W. Krabbe In an attempt to redeem the Lorenzen-type dialogues from their detractors, it is perhaps best first to provide a survey of the various benefits these dialogues have been supposed to yield. This will be done in Section I. It will not be possible, within the confines of this paper, to scrutinize them all, but in Section II we shall delve deeper into the capacity of this type of dialogue to yield a model for the immanent criticism of philosophical positions. Section III will extend the concept of a dialogue in such a way as to conform better with our intuitive conceptions of what a rational discussion of a position should contain. This will be followed up by a concept of ,winning a dialogue' that takes position midway between the old conception of ,winning one play' and that of the full-fledged presentation of a winning strategy (a proof). Concepts of ,rational discussion' are thus shown to be, plausibly, more fundamental than those of proof. In Section IV, I shall discuss the specific problems about dialogical foundations put forward by Wilfrid Hodges. [source] IS POST-MORTEM HARM POSSIBLE?BIOETHICS, Issue 8 2009UNDERSTANDING DEATH HARM AND GRIEF ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is not to affirm or deny particular philosophical positions, but to explore the limits of intelligibility about what post-mortem harm means, especially in the light of improper post-mortem procedures at Bristol and Alder Hey hospitals in the late 1990s. The parental claims of post-mortem harm to dead children at Alder Hey Hospital are reviewed from five different philosophical perspectives, eventually settling on a crucial difference of perspective about how we understand harm to the dead. On the one hand there is the broadly ,analytical' tradition1 of thinking that predicates the notion of harm on the basis of an existing subject. Since the dead are non-existent persons, it makes little sense to view the dead as being harmed. On the other hand, there is a phenomenological perspective, where the dead, in respect to the experience of grief, are existentially absent. This forms the basis that it is possible to harm grieving parent's experiences of how their dead are treated. The article ends with a short examination of what harming the dead implies for traditional bioethical concerns, namely, obtaining informed consent from significant others when planning medical research on the newly dead. [source] | |||||||||||||