Philosophy of Education Philosophy of Education E ducation can refer to either the academic ac ademic field of applied philosophy or to one of any educational philosophies that promote a specific type or vision of education, and/or which examine the definition, goals and meaning of education. As an academic field, philosophy of education is "the philosophical study of education and its problems...its problems...its [1]
central subject matter is education, and its methods are those of philosophy". philosophy" .
"The philosophy of education
may be either the philosophy of the process of education or the philosophy of the discipline of education. That is, it may be part of the discipline in the sense of being concerned with the aims, forms, methods, or results of the process of educating or being educated; or it may be meta disciplinary in the sense of being [2]
concerned with the concepts, aims, and methods of the discipline. "
As such, it is both part of the field of
education and a field of applied philosophy, drawing from fields of metaphysics, of metaphysics, epistemology, axiology and the philosophical approaches (speculative, prescriptive, and/or analytic) to address questions in and [3]
about pedagogy, education policy, and curriculum, as well as the process of learning, to name a few. few .
For
example, it might study what constitutes upbringing and education, the values and norms revealed through upbringing and educational practices, the limits and legitimization of education as an academic discipline, and the relation between educational theory and practice. Instead of being taught in philosophy departments, philosophy of education is usually housed in departments [1]
or colleges of education, similar to how philosophy of law is generally taught in law schools .
The multiple
ways of conceiving education coupled with the multiple fields and approaches of philosophy make philosophy of education not only a very diverse field but also one that is not easily defined. Although there is overlap, philosophy of education should not be conflated with educational theory, which is not defined specifically by the application of philosophy to questions in education. Philosophy of education also should not be confused with philosophy education, the practice of teaching and learning the subject of philosophy. Philosophy of education can also be understood not as an academic discipline but as a normative educational theory that unifies pedagogy, curriculum, learning theory, and the purpose of education and is grounded in specific metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological assumptions. These theories are also called educational philosophies. For example, a teacher might be said to follow a perennialist educational philosophy. Idealism Plato Date: 424/423 BC - 348/347 BC
Plato's educational philosophy was grounded in his vision of the ideal Republic, wherein the individual was best served by being subordinated to a just society. He advocated removing children from their mothers' care and raising them as wards of the state, with great care being taken to differentiate children suitable to the various castes, the highest receiving the most education, so that they could act as guardians of the city and care for the less able. Education would be holistic, including facts, skills, physical discipline, and music and art, which he considered the highest form of endeavor. Plato believed that talent was distributed non-genetically and thus must be found in children born in any social class. He builds on this by insisting that those suitably gifted are to be trained by the state so that they may be qualified to assume the role of a ruling class. What this establishes is essentially a system of
selective public education premised on the assumption that an educated minority of the population are, by virtue of their education (and inborn educability), sufficient for healthy governance. Plato's writings contain some of the following ideas: Elementary education would be confined to the guardian class till the age of 18, followed by two years of compulsory military training and then by higher education for those who qualified. While elementary education made the soul responsive to the environment, higher education helped the soul to search for truth which illuminated it. Both boys and girls receive the same kind of education. Elementary education consisted of music and gymnastics, designed to train and blend gentle and fierce qualities in the individual and create a harmonious person. At the age of 20, a selection was made. The best one would take an advanced course in mathematics, geometry, astronomy and harmonics. The first course in the scheme of higher education would last for ten years. It would be for those who had a flair for science. At the age of 30 there would be another selection; those who qualified would study dialectics and metaphysics, logic and philosophy for the next five years. They would study the idea of good and first principles of being. After accepting junior positions in the army for 15 years, a man would have completed his theoretical and practical education by the age of 50. Immanuel Kant Date: 1724 – 1804 1804
Immanuel Kant believed that education differs from training in that the latter involves thinking whereas the former does not. In addition to educating reason, of central importance to him was the development of character and teaching of moral maxims. Kant was a proponent of public education and of learning by [4]
doing. doing.
Realism Aristotle Date: 384 BC - 322 BC
Only fragments of Aristotle's treatise On Education are still in existence. We thus know of his philosophy of education
primarily
through
brief
passages
in
other
works.
Aristotle
considered
human
nature, habit and reason to be equally important forces to be cultivated in education. Thus, for example, he considered repetition to be a key tool to develop good habits. The teacher was to lead the student systematically; this differs, for example, from Socrates' emphasis on questioning his listeners to bring out their own ideas (though the comparison is perhaps incongruous since Socrates was dealing with adults). Aristotle placed great emphasis on balancing the theoretical and practical aspects of subjects taught. Subjects he explicitly mentions as being important included reading, writing and mathematics; music; physical education; literature and history; and a wide range of sciences. He also mentioned the importance of play. One of education's primary missions for Aristotle, perhaps it ‘s most important, was to produce good and virtuous citizens for the polis. All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires of empires depends on the education of youth.
Avicenna Date: 980 AD - 1037 AD
In the medieval Islamic world, an elementary school was known as a maktab, which dates back to at least the 10th century. Like madrasahs (which referred to higher education), a maktab was often attached to a mosque.
In the 11th century, Ibn Sina (known as Avicennain the West), wrote a chapter dealing with the maktab entitled "The Role of the Teacher in the Training and Upbringing of Children", as a guide to teachers working at maktab schools. He wrote that children can learn better if taught in classes instead of individual tuition from private tutors, and he gave a number of reasons for why this is the case, citing the value ofcompetition ofcompetition and emulation among pupils as well as the usefulness of group discussions and debates. Ibn Sina described the curriculum of a maktab school in some detail, describing the curricula for two stages [5]
of education in a maktab school. school .
Ibn Sina wrote that children should be sent to a maktab school from the age of 6 and be taught primary education until they reach the age of 14. During which time, he wrote that they should be taught the Qur'an, Islamic metaphysics, language, literature, Islamic ethics, and manual skills (which could refer to a variety of practical skills) .
[5]
Ibn Sina refers to the secondary education stage of maktab schooling as the period of specialization, when pupils should begin to acquire manual skills, regardless of their social status. He writes that children after the age of 14 should be given a choice to choose and specialize in subjects they have an interest in, whether it was reading, manual skills, literature, preaching, medicine, geometry, trade and commerce, craftsmanship, or any other subject or profession they would be interested in pursuing for a future career. He wrote that this was a transitional stage and that there needs to be flexibility regarding the age in which pupils graduate, as the student's emotional development and chosen subjects need to be taken into account .
[6]
The empiricist theory of 'tabula rasa' was also developed by Ibn Sina. He argued that the "human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to know" and that knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts" which is developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning; observations lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts." He further argued that the intellect itself "possesses levels of development from the material intellect ( al-„aql al hayulani), that potentiality that can acquire knowledge to the active intellect ( al-„aql al - fa„il fa„il ), ), the state of the
human intellect in conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge."
[7]
Ibn Tufail Date: c. 1105 - 1185
In the 12th century, the Andalusian-Arabian Andalusian -Arabian philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufail (known as "Abubacer" or "Ebn
Tophail"
in
the
West)
demonstrated
the empiricist theory
of 'tabula
rasa'
as
a thought
experiment through his Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island, through experience alone. The Latin translation of his philosophical novel, Philosophus Autodidactus, published byEdward byEdward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's Locke' s [8]
formulation of tabula rasa in " An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" . John Locke Date: 1632-1704
Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education is an outline on how to educate this mind: he expresses the belief that education maketh the man, or, more fundamentally, that the mind is an "empty cabinet", with the statement, "I think I may say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or [9]
evil, useful or not, by their education. "
Locke also wrote that "the little and almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies have very [10]
important and lasting consequences. "
He argued that the "associations of ideas" that one makes when
young are more important than those made later because they are the foundation of the self: they are, put differently, what first mark the tabula rasa. In his Essay, in which is introduced both of these concepts, Locke warns against, for example, letting "a foolish maid" convince a child that "goblins and sprites" are associated with the night for "darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall [11]
be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other. "
"Associationism", as this theory would come to be called, exerted a powerful influence over eighteenthcentury thought, particularly educational theory, as nearly every educational writer warned parents not to allow their children to develop negative associations. It also led to the development of psychology and other new disciplines with David Hartley's attempt to discover a biological mechanism for associationism in his Observations on Man (1749). Jean-Jacques Rousseau Date: 1712-1778
Rousseau, though he paid his respects to Plato's philosophy, rejected it as impractical due to the decayed state of society. Rousseau also had a different theory of human development; where Plato held that people are born with skills appropriate to different castes (though he did not regard these skills as being inherited), Rousseau held that there was one developmental process common to all humans. This was an intrinsic, natural process, of which the primary behavioral manifestation was curiosity. This differed from Locke's 'tabula rasa' in that it was an active process deriving from the child's nature, which drove the child to learn and adapt to its surroundings. Rousseau wrote in his book Emile that all children are perfectly designed organisms, ready to learn from their surroundings so as to grow into virtuous adults, but due to the malign influence of corrupt society, they often fail to do so. Rousseau advocated an educational method which consisted of removing the child from society — for example, to a country home — and alternately conditioning him through changes to his environment and setting traps and puzzles for him to solve or overcome. Rousseau was unusual in that he recognized and addressed the potential of a problem of legitimation for teaching. He advocated that adults always be truthful with children, and in particular that they never hide the fact that the basis for their authority in teaching was purely one of physical coercion: "I'm bigger than you." Once children reached the age of reason, at about 12, they would be engaged as free individuals in the ongoing process of their own. He once said that a child should grow up without adult interference and that the child must be guided to suffer from the experience of the natural consequences of his own acts or behaviour. When he experiences the consequences of his own acts, he advises himself. Mortimer Jerome Adler Date: 1902-2001
Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American philosopher, educator, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for the longest stretches in New York City, Chicago, San
Francisco,
and San
Mateo,
California.
He
worked
for Columbia
University,
the University of Chicago, Encyclopædia Britannica, and Adler's own Institute for Philosophical Research. [12]
Adler was married twice and had four children .
Adler was a proponent of educational perennialism.
Harry S. Broudy Date: 1905-1998
Broudy's philosophical views were based on the tradition of classical realism, dealing with truth, goodness, and beauty. However he was also influenced by the modern philosophy existentialism and instrumentalism. In his textbook Building a Philosophy of Education he has two major ideas that are the main points to his philosophical outlook: The first is truth and the second is universal structures to be found in humanity's struggle for education and the good life. Broudy also studied issues on society's demands on school. He thought education would be a link to unify the diverse society and urged the society to put more trust and a commitment to the schools and a good education. Scholasticism Thomas Aquinas Date: c. 1225 - 1274 John Milton Date: 1608-1674
The objective of medieval education was an overtly religious one, primarily concerned with uncovering transcendental truths that would lead a person back to God through a life of moral and religious choice (Kreeft 15). The vehicle by which these truths were uncovered was dialectic: To the medieval mind, debate was a fine art, a serious science, and a fascinating entertainment, much more than it is to the modern mind, because the medievals believed, like Socrates, that dialectic could uncover truth. Thus a ‗scholastic disputation‘ was not a personal contest in cleverness, nor was it ‗sharing opinions‘; it was a shared journey of discovery (Kreeft 14-15). Pragmatism John Dewey Date: 1859-1952
In Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, Dewey stated that education, in its broadest sense, is the means of the "social continuity of life" given the "primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group". Education is therefore a necessity, for "the life of the group goes on."
[13]
Dewey was a proponent of Educational Progressivism and was a
relentless campaigner for reform of education, pointing out that the authoritarian, strict, pre-ordained knowledge approach of modern traditional education was too concerned with delivering knowledge, and not enough with understanding students' actual experiences . William James Date: 1842 – 1910 William Heard Kilpatrick Date: 1871-1965
[14]
William Heard Kilpatrick was a US American philosopher of education and a colleague and a successor of John Dewey. He was a major figure in the progressive education movement of the early 20th century. Kilpatrick developed the Project Method for early childhood education, which was a form of Progressive Education organized curriculum and classroom activities around a subject's central theme. He believed that the role of a teacher should be that of a "guide" as opposed to an authoritarian figure. Kilpatrick believed that children should direct their own learning according to their interests and should be allowed to explore their environment, experiencing their learning through the natural senses .
[15]
Proponents of Progressive Education
and the Project Method reject traditional schooling that focuses on memorization, rote learning, strictly organized classrooms (desks in rows; students always seated), and typical forms of assessment. Nel Noddings Date: 1929 –
Noddings' first sole-authored book Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (1984) followed close on the 1982 publication of Carol Gilligan‘s ground-breaking work in the ethics of care In a Different Voice. While her work on ethics continued, with the publication of Women and Evil (1989) and
later works on moral education, most of her later publications have been on the philosophy of education and educational theory. Her most significant works in these areas have been Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief (1993) and Philosophy of Education (1995).
Analytic Philosophy
Analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy (sometimes analytical philosophy) is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to
dominate English-speaking
countries in
the
20th
century.
In
the United
States, United
Kingdom, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, the overwhelming majority of university philosophy departments identify themselves as "analytic" departments.[1] The term "analytic philosophy" can refer to:
A broad philosophical tradition[2][3] characterized by an emphasis on clarity and argument (often achieved via modern formal logic and analysis of language) and a respect for the natural sciences.[4][5][6]
The more specific set of developments of early 20th-century philosophy that were the historical antecedents of the broad sense: e.g., the work of Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Gottlob Frege, and the logical positivists.
In this narrower sense, analytic philosophy is identified with specific philosophical commitments (many of which are rejected by contemporary analytic philosophers), such as:
The logical positivist principle that there are not any specifically philosophical truths and that the object of philosophy
is
the
logical
clarification
of
thoughts.
This
may
be
contrasted
with
the
traditional foundationalism, which considers philosophy as a special, elite science that investigates the fundamental reasons and principles of everything.[7] As a result, many analytic philosophers have considered their inquiries as continuous with, or subordinate to, those of the natural sciences.[8]
The principle that the logical clarification of thoughts can only be achieved by analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions.[9] The logical form of a proposition is a way of representing it (often using the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical system) to display its similarity with all other propositions of the same type. However, analytic philosophers disagree widely about the correct logical form of ordinary language.[10]
The rejection of sweeping philosophical systems in favor of attention to detail,[11] or ordinary language.[12]
According to a characteristic paragraph by Bertrand Russell: "Modern analytical empiricism [...] differs from that of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume by its incorporation of mathematics and its development of a powerful logical technique. It is thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve definite answers, which have the quality of science rather than of philosophy. It has the advantage, as compared with the philosophies of the system-builders, of being able to tackle its problems one at a time, instead of having to invent at one stroke a block theory of the whole universe. Its methods, in this respect, resemble those of science. I have no doubt that, in so far as philosophical knowledge is possible, it is by such methods that it must be sought; I have also no doubt that, by these methods, many ancient problems are completely soluble." Analytic philosophy is often understood in contrast to other philosophical traditions, most notably continental philosophy, and also Indian philosophy, Thomism, and Marxism.[14] History
Late 19th-century English philosophy was dominated by British idealism, as taught by philosophers such as F.H. Bradley and Thomas Hill Green. It was against this intellectual background that the founders of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, articulated the program of early analytic philosophy. Since its beginning, a basic principle of analytic philosophy has been conceptual clarity,[15] in the name of which Moore and Russell rejected Hegelianism, which they accused of obscurity and idealism.[16][17] Inspired by developments in modern logic, the early Russell claimed that the problems of philosophy can be solved by showing the simple constituents of complex notions .[15] Russell, during his early career, along with collaborator Alfred North Whitehead, was much influenced by Gottlob Frege, who developed predicate logic, which allowed a much greater range of sentences to be parsed into logical form than was possible by the ancient Aristotlean logic. Frege was also a major philosopher of mathematics in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. In contrast to Husserl's 1891 book Philosophie der Arithmetik , which attempted to show that the concept of the cardinal number derived from psychical acts of
grouping objects and counting them,[18] Frege sought to show that mathematics and logic have their own validity, independent of the judgments or mental states of individual mathematicians and logicians (which were the basis of arithmetic according to the "psychologism" of Husserl's Philosophie). Frege further developed his philosophy of logic and mathematics in The Foundations of Arithmetic and The Basic Laws of Arithmetic where he provided an alternative to psychologistic accounts of the concept of number. Like Frege, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead attempted to show that mathematics is reducible to fundamental logical principles. Their Principia Mathematica (1910 –1913) encouraged many philosophers to renew their interest with the development of symbolic logic. Additionally, Bertrand Russell adopted Frege's predicate logic as his primary philosophical method, a method he thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word “is” has three distinct meanings by predicate logic:
For the sentence 'the cat is asleep', the is of predication means that "x is P" (denoted as P(x))
For the sentence 'there is a cat', the is of existence means that "there is an x" ( ∃x);
For the sentence 'three is half of six', the is of identity means that "x is the same as y" (x=y).
Russell sought to resolve various philosophical issues by applying such definite distinctions, most famously in his analysis of definite descriptions in "On Denoting."[19] Ideal language analysis
From about 1910 to 1930, analytic philosophers like Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasized creating an ideal language for philosophical analysis, which would be free from the ambiguities of ordinary language that, in their opinion, often made philosophy invalid. This philosophical trend can be called "ideal-language analysis" or "formalism". During this phase, Russell and Wittgenstein sought to understand language, and hence philosophical problems, by using formal logic to formalize the way in which philosophical statements are made. Ludwig Wittgenstein developed a comprehensive system of logical atomism in his Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus. He thereby argued that the world is the totality of actual states of affairs and that these states of
affairs can be expressed by the language of first-order predicate logic. So a picture of the world can be made by expressing atomic facts as atomic propositions, and linking them using logical operators. Logical positivism
During the late 1920s, '30s, and '40s, Russell and Wittgenstein's formalism was developed by a group of philosophers in Vienna and Berlin, who were known as the Vienna Circle and Berlin Circle respectively, into a doctrine known as logical positivism (or logical empiricism). Logical positivism used formal logical methods to develop an empiricist account of knowledge.[20] Philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, along with other members of the Vienna Circle, claimed that the truths of logic and mathematics were tautologies, and those of science were verifiable empirical claims. These two constituted the entire universe of meaningful judgments; anything else was nonsense. The claims of ethics, aesthetics and theology were, accordingly, pseudo-statements, neither true nor false, simply meaningless nonsense. Karl Popper's insistence upon the role of falsification in the philosophy of science was a reaction to the logical positivists.[21] With the coming to power of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism in Germany and Austria, many members of the Vienna and Berlin Circles fled Germany, most commonly to Britain and America, which helped to reinforce the dominance of logical positivism and analytic philosophy in the Anglophone countries .[22] Logical positivists typically considered philosophy as having a very limited function. For them, philosophy concerned the clarification of thoughts, rather than having a distinct subject matter of its own. The positivists adopted the verification principle, according to which every meaningful statement is either analytic or is capable of being verified by experience. This caused the logical positivists to reject many traditional problems of philosophy, especially those of metaphysics or ontology, as meaningless. Ordinary language analysis
After World War II, during the late 1940s and 1950s, analytic philosophy took a turn toward ordinary-language analysis. This movement had two main strands. One followed in the wake of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, which departed dramatically from his early work of the Tractatus. The other, known as "Oxford philosophy", involved J. L. Austin. In contrast to earlier analytic philosophers (including the early Wittgenstein) who thought philosophers should avoid the deceptive trappings of natural language by constructing ideal languages, ordinary language philosophers claimed that ordinary language already represented a large number of subtle distinctions that had been unrecognized in the formulation of traditional philosophical theories or problems. While schools such as logical positivism emphasize logical terms, supposed to be universal and separate from contingent factors (such as culture, language, historical conditions), ordinary language philosophy emphasizes the use of language by ordinary people. Some have argued that ordinary language philosophy is of a more sociological grounding, as it essentially emphasizes on the use of language within social contexts. The best-known ordinary language philosophers during the 1950s were Austin and Gilbert Ryle. Some say that this movement marked a return to the common sense philosophy advocated by G.E. Moore.
Ordinary language philosophy often sought to disperse philosophical problems by showing them to be the result of misunderstanding ordinary language. See for example Ryle (who attempted to dispose of "Descartes' myth") and Wittgenstein, among others. Contemporary analytic philosophy
Although contemporary philosophers who self-identify as "analytic" have widely divergent interests, assumptions, and methods—and have often rejected the fundamental premises that defined the analytic movement before 1960 —analytic philosophy, in its contemporary state, is usually taken to be defined by a particular style[4] characterized by precision and thoroughness about a narrow topic, and resistance to "imprecise or cavalier discussions of broad topics."[23] In
the
1950s,
logical
positivism
was
influentially
challenged
by Wittgenstein in
the Philosophical
Investigations, Quine in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", and Sellars in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind .
Following 1960, Anglophone philosophy began to incorporate a wider range of interests, views, and methods. Still,
many
philosophers
in
Britain
and
America
still
consider
themselves
to
be
"analytic
philosophers."[4][1] Largely, they have done so by expanding the notion of "analytic philosophy" from the specific programs that dominated Anglophone philosophy before 1960 to a much more general notion of an "analytic" style, characterized by precision and thoroughness about a narrow topic and opposed to "imprecise or cavalier discussions of broad topics".[23] This interpretation of the history is far from universally accepted, and its opponents would say that it grossly downplays the role of Wittgenstein in the sixties and seventies. Many philosophers and historians have attempted to define or describe analytic philosophy. Those definitions often include a focus on conceptual analysis: A.P. Martinich draws an analogy between analytic philosophy's interest in conceptual analysis and analytic chemistry, which "aims at determining chemical compositions."[24] Steven D. Hales described analytic philosophy as one of three types of philosophical method practiced in the West: "[i]n roughly reverse order by number of proponents, they are phenomenology, ideological philosophy, and analytic philosophy".[25] Scott Soames agrees that clarity is important: analytic philosophy, he says, has "an implicit commitment —albeit faltering and imperfect —to the ideals of clarity, rigor and argumentation" and it "aims at truth and knowledge, as opposed to moral or spiritual improvement [...] the goal in analytic philosophy is to discover what is true, not to provide a useful recipe for living one's life". Soames also states that analytic philosophy is characterized by "a more piecemeal approach. There is, I think, a widespread presumption within the tradition that it is often possible to make philosophical progress by intensively investigating a small, circumscribed range of philosophical issues while holding broader, systematic questions in abeyance".[26] A few of the most important and active fields and subfields in analytic philosophy are summarized in the following sections. Philosophy of mind and cognitive science
Motivated by the logical positivists' interest in verificationism, behaviorism was the most prominent theory of mind in analytic philosophy for the first half of the twentieth century. Behaviorists tended to hold either that statements about the mind were equivalent to statements about behavior and dispositions to behave in particular ways or that mental states were directly equivalent to behavior and dispositions to behave. Behaviorism later became far less popular, in favor of type physicalism or functionalism, theories that identified mental states with brain states. During this period, topics in the philosophy of mind were often in close contact with issues in cognitive science such as modularity or innateness. Finally, analytic philosophy has featured a few
philosophers who were dualists, and recently forms of property dualism have had a resurgence, with David Chalmers as the most prominent representative.[27] John Searle suggests that the obsession with linguistic philosophy of the last century has been superseded by an emphasis on the philosophy of mind,[28] in which functionalism is currently the dominant theory. In recent years, a central focus for research in the philosophy of mind has been consciousness. And while there is a general consensus for the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness,[29] there are many views as to how the specifics
work
out.
The
best
known
theories
are Daniel Dennett's
heterophenomenology, Fred
Dretske and Michael Tye's representationalism, and the higher-order theories of either David M. Rosenthal— who advocates a higher-order thought (HOT) model —or David Armstrong and William Lycan—who advocate a higher-order perception (HOP) model. An alternative higher-order theory, the higher-order global states (HOGS) model, is offered by Robert van Gulick.[30] Ethics in analytic philosophy
Philosophers working in the analytic tradition have gradually come to distinguish three major branches of moral philosophy.
normative ethics whose function is the examination and production of normative ethical judgments
meta-ethics whose function is the investigation of moral terms and concepts,
applied ethics whose function is the investigation of how existing normative principles should be applied in difficult or borderline cases, often cases created by the appearance of new technologies or new scientific knowledge. Normative Ethics
The first half of the twentieth century was marked by skepticism toward, and neglect of, normative ethics. Related subjects, such as social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of history, moved to the fringes of English-language philosophy during this period. During this time, utilitarianism was the only non-skeptical approach to ethics to remain popular. However, as the influence of logical positivism began to wane mid-century, contemporary analytic philosophers began to have a renewed
interest
of Aristotle's virtue
in
ethics. G.E.M.
ethical approach
Anscombe’s 1958 Modern Moral Philosophy sparked a revival and John
Rawls’s 1971 A
Theory
of
Justice restored
interest
in Kantian ethical philosophy. At present, contemporary normative ethics is dominated by three schools: utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and deontology. Meta-Ethics
Twentieth-century meta-ethics has two roots. The first is G. E. Moore's investigation into the nature of ethical terms (e.g. good) in his Principia Ethica (1903), which identified the naturalistic fallacy. Along with Hume's famous is/ought distinction, the naturalistic fallacy was a central point of investigation for analytical philosophers. The second is in logical positivism and its attitude that statements which are unverifiable are meaningless. Although that attitude was adopted originally as a means to promote scientific investigation of the world by rejecting grand metaphysical systems, it had the side effect of making (ethical and aesthetic) value judgments (as well as religious statements and beliefs) meaningless. But since value judgments are obviously of major importance in human life, it became incumbent on logical positivism to develop an explanation of the nature
and meaning of value judgements. As a result, analytic philosophers avoided normative ethics, and instead began meta-ethical investigations into the nature of moral terms, statements, and judgments. The logical positivists held that statements about value—including all ethical and aesthetic judgments —are noncognitive; that is, they make no statements that can be objectively verified or falsified. Instead, the logical positivists adopted an emotivist position, which held that value judgments expressed the attitude of the speaker. Saying, "Killing is wrong", they thought, was equivalent to saying, "Boo to murder", or saying the word "murder" with a particular tone of disapproval. While non-cognitivism was generally accepted by analytic philosophers, emotivism had many deficiencies, and evolved into more sophisticated non-cognitivist positions such as the expressivism of Charles Stevenson, and the universal prescriptivism of R. M. Hare, which had its foundations in J. L. Austin's philosophy of speech acts. These positions were not without their critics. Phillipa Foot contributed several essays attacking all these positions. J. O. Urmson's article "On Grading" called the is/ought distinction into question. As non-cognitivism, the is/ought distinction, and the naturalistic fallacy began to be called into question, analytic philosophers began to show a renewed interest in the traditional questions of moral philosophy. Perhaps most influential in this area was Elizabeth Anscombe, whose landmark monograph "Intention" was called by Donald Davidson "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle", and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of moral psychology. A favorite student and close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein, her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term "consequentialism" into the philosophical lexicon, declared the "is-ought" impasse to be a dead end, and led to a revival in virtue ethics. Applied Ethics
A significant feature of analytic philosophy since approximately 1970 has been the emergence of applied ethics - an interest in the application of moral principles to specific practical issues. Areas of special interest for applied ethics include environmental issues, animal rights issues, and the many challenges created by advancing medical science.[31][32][33] Analytic philosophy of religion
As with the study of ethics, early analytic philosophy tended to avoid the study of philosophy of religion, largely dismissing (as per the logical positivists view) the subject as part of metaphysics and therefore meaningless.[34] The collapse of logical positivism renewed interest in philosophy of religion, prompting philosophers like William Alston, John Mackie, Alvin Plantinga, Robert Merrihew Adams, Richard Swinburne, and Antony Flew not only to introduce new problems, but to re-open classical topics such as the nature ofmiracles, theistic arguments, the problem of evil, (see existence of God) the rationality of belief in God, concepts of the nature of God, and many more.[35] Plantinga, Mackie and Flew debated the logical validity of the free will defense as a way to solve the problem of evil.[36] Alston, grappling with the consequences of analytic philosophy of language, worked on the nature of religious language. Adams worked on the relationship of faith and morality .[37] Analytic epistemology and metaphysics has formed the basis for a number of philosophically-sophisticated theistic arguments, like those of the reformed epistemologists like Plantinga. Analytic philosophy of religion has also been preoccupied with Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as his interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion.[38] Using first-hand remarks (which was later published in Philosophical Investigations, Culture and Value,
and
other
works),
philosophers
such
as Peter
Winch and Norman Malcolm developed what has come to be known as contemplative philosophy , a Wittgensteinian school of thought rooted in the "Swansea tradition," and which includes Wittgensteinians such as Rush Rhees, Peter Winch and D. Z. Phillips, among others. The name "contemplative philosophy" was first coined by D. Z. Phillips in Philosophy's Cool Place, which rests on an interpretation of a passage from Wittgenstein's "Culture and Value."[39] This interpretation was first labeled, "Wittgensteinian Fideism," by Kai Nielsen but those who consider themselves Wittgensteinians in the Swansea tradition have relentlessly and repeatedly rejected this construal as caricature of Wittgenstein's considered position; this is especially true of D. Z. Phillips.[40] Responding to this interpretation, Kai Nielsen and D.Z. Phillips became two of the most prominent philosophers on Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion.[41] Political philosophy Liberalism
Current analytic political philosophy owes much to John Rawls, who, in a series of papers from the 1950s onward (most notably "Two Concepts of Rules" and "Justice as Fairness") and his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, produced a sophisticated and closely argued defence of a liberalism in politics. This was followed in short order by
Rawls's
colleague Robert
Nozick's
book Anarchy,
State,
and
Utopia,
a
defence
of free-
market libertarianism. Isaiah Berlin has had a notable influence on both analytic political philosophy and Liberalism with his lecture the Two Concepts of Liberty. Recent decades have also seen the rise of several critiques of liberalism, including the feminist critiques of Catharine MacKinnon andAndrea Dworkin, the communitarian critiques of Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre (though it should be noted both shy away from the term), and the multiculturalist critiques of Amy Gutmann and Charles Taylor. Although not an analytic philosopher, Jürgen Habermas is another important —if controversial—figure in contemporary analytic political philosophy, whose social theory is a blend of social science, Marxism, neo-Kantianism, and American pragmatism. Consequentialist libertarianism also derives from the analytic tradition. Analytical Marxism
Another development in the area of political philosophy has been the emergence of a school known as Analytical Marxism. Members of this school seek to apply the techniques of analytic philosophy, along with tools of modern social science such as rational choice theory to the elucidation of the theories of Karl Marx and his successors. The best-known member of this school is Oxford University philosopher G.A. Cohen, whose 1978 work, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence is generally taken as representing the genesis of this school. In that book, Cohen attempted to apply the tools of logical and linguistic analysis to the elucidation and defense of Marx's materialist conception of history. Other prominent Analytical Marxists include the economist John Roemer, the social scientist Jon Elster, and the sociologist Erik Olin Wright. All these people have attempted to build upon Cohen's work by bringing to bear modern social science methods, such as rational choice theory, to supplement Cohen's use of analytic philosophical techniques in the interpretation of Marxian theory. Cohen himself would later engage directly with Rawlsian political philosophy in attempt to advance a socialist theory of justice that stands in contrast to both traditional Marxism and the theories advanced by Rawls and Nozick. In particular, he points to Marx's principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Communitarianism
Communitarians such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer and Michael Sandel advance a critique of Liberalism that uses analytic techniques to isolate the key assumptions of Liberal individualists, such as Rawls, and then challenges these assumptions. In particular, Communitarians challenge the Liberal assumption that the individual can be viewed as fully autonomous from the community in which he lives and is brought up. Instead, they push for a conception of the individual that emphasizes the role that the community plays in shaping his or her values, thought processes and opinions. Analytic metaphysics
One striking break with early analytic philosophy was the revival of metaphysical theorizing in the second half of the twentieth century. Philosophers such as David Kellogg Lewis and David Armstrong developed elaborate theories on a range of topics such as universals, causation, possibility and necessity, and abstract objects. Among the developments that led to the revival of metaphysical theorizing were Quine's attack on the analyticsynthetic distinction, which was generally taken to undermine Carnap's distinction between existence questions internal to a framework and those external to it.[42] Metaphysics remains a fertile area for research, having recovered from the attacks of A.J. Ayer and the logical positivists. And though many were inherited from previous decades, the debate remains fierce. The philosophy of fiction, the problem of empty names, and the debate over existence's status as a property have all risen out of relative obscurity to become central concerns, while perennial issues such as free will, possible worlds, and the philosophy of time have had new life breathed into them.[43][44] Science has also played an increasingly significant role in metaphysics. The theory of special relativity has had a profound effect on the philosophy of time, and quantum physics is routinely discussed in the free will debate.[45] The weight given to scientific evidence is largely due to widespread commitments among philosophers to scientific realism and naturalism. Philosophy of language
Philosophy of language is another area that has slowed down over the course of the last four decades, as evidenced by the fact that few major figures in contemporary philosophy treat it as a primary research area. Indeed, while the debate remains fierce, it is still strongly under the influence of those figures from the first half of the century: Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, Alfred Tarski, and W.V.O. Quine. In Naming and Necessity , Kripke influentially argued that flaws in common theories of proper names are indicative of larger misunderstandings of the metaphysics of necessity and possibility. By wedding the tools of modal logic to a causal theory of reference, Kripke was widely regarded as reviving theories of essence and identity as respectable topics of philosophical discussion. Philosophy of science
Reacting against the earlier philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper, who had suggested the falsifiability criterion on which to judge the demarcation between science and non-science, discussions in philosophy of science in the last forty years were dominated by social constructivist and cognitive relativist theories of science. [dubious – discuss]
Thomas Samuel Kuhn is one of the major philosophers of science representative of the former theory,
while Paul Feyerabend is representative of the latter theory. Philosophy of biology has also undergone considerable growth, particularly due to the considerable debate in recent years over evolution. Here again, Daniel Dennett and his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea stand at the foreground of this debate. [dubious – discuss]
Epistemology
Owing largely to Gettier's 1963 paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", epistemology saw a resurgence in analytic philosophy over the last 50 years. A large portion of current epistemological research aims to resolve the problems that Gettier's examples presented to the traditional justified true belief model of knowledge. Other areas of contemporary research include basic knowledge, the nature of evidence, the value of knowledge, epistemic luck, virtue epistemology, the role of intuitions in justification, and treating knowledge as a primitive concept. Aesthetics
In the wake of attacks on the traditional aesthetic notions of beauty and sublimity from post-modern thinkers, analytic philosophers were slow in taking on analyses of art and aesthetic judgment. Susanne Langer[46] and Nelson Goodman[47] addressed these problems in an analytic style in the 1950s and 60s. Rigorous efforts to pursue analyses of traditional aesthetic concepts were undertaken by Guy Sircello in the 1970s and 80s, resulting in new analytic theories of love[48], sublimity[49], and beauty[50]. EXISTENTIALISM Existentialism is generally considered to be the philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the
starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the experiences of the individual, that moral thinking and scientific thinking together do not suffice to understand human existence, and, therefore, that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity , is necessary to understand human existence.[1][2][3]( Authenticity , in the context of existentialism, is the degree to which one is true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.)[4] Existentialism began in the mid-19th century as a reaction against then-dominant systematic philosophies, with Søren Kierkegaard generally considered to be the first existentialist philosopher.[3][5][6] Opposed to Hegelianism and Kantianism,[3][6] he posited that it is the individual who is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and for living life passionately and sincerely,[7][8] even in view of its many existential obstacles and distractions.[9] After World War II, existentialism became a popular movement, attracting supporters and influencing a range of disciplines besides philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology.[10] Existentialists generally regard traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[11][12] Scholars generally consider the views of existentialist philosophers to be profoundly different from one another relative to other philosophies.[3][13][14] Criticisms of existentialist philosophers include the assertions that they confuse their use of terminology and contradict themselves.[15][16]
Concepts Existence precedes essence A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called his or her "essence" instead of there being a predetermined essence that defines what it is to be a human. Thus, human beings – through their own consciousness – create
their own values and determine a meaning to their life .[18]Although it was Sartre who explicitly coined the phrase, similar notions can be found in the thought of many existentialist philosophers from Kierkegaard to Heidegger. It is often claimed in this context that a person defines himself or herself, which is often perceived as stating that they can wish to be something — anything, a bird, for instance — and then be it. According to most existentialist philosophers, however, this would constitute an inauthentic existence. Instead, the phrase should be taken to say that the person is (1) defined only insofar as he or she acts and (2) that he or she is responsible for his or her actions. For example, someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person.
Furthermore, by this action of cruelty, such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity (a cruel person). This is as opposed to their genes, or 'human nature', bearing the blame. As Sartre puts it in his Existentialism is a Humanism: "man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards." Of course, the more positive, therapeutic aspect of this is also implied: A person can choose to act in a different way, and to be a good person instead of a cruel person. Here it is also clear that since humans can choose to be either cruel or good, they are, in fact, neither of these things essentially. [19] The Absurd
The notion of the Absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world beyond what meaning we give to it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or "unfairness" of the world. This contrasts with "karmic" ways of thinking in which "bad things don't happen to good people"; to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad thing; what happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a "good" person as to a "bad" person. Because of the world's absurdity, at any point in time, anything can happen to anyone, and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the Absurd. The notion of the absurd has been prominent in literature throughout history. Many of the literary works of Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus contain descriptions of people who encounter the absurdity of the world. It is in relation to the concept of the devastating awareness of meaninglessness that Albert Camus claimed that "there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide" in his The Myth of Sisyphus. Although "prescriptions" against the possibly deleterious consequences of these kinds of encounters vary, from Kierkegaard's religious "stage" to Camus' insistence on persevering in spite of absurdity, the concern with helping people avoid living their lives in ways that put them in the perpetual danger of having everything meaningful break down is common to most existentialist philosophers. The possibility of having everything meaningful break down poses a threat of quietism, which is inherently against the existentialist philosophy.[20] It has been said that the possibility of suicide makes all humans existentialists.[21] Facticity
Facticity is a concept defined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness as that "in-itself" of which humans are in the mode of not being. This can be more easily understood when considering it in relation to the temporal dimension of past: One's past is what one is in the sense that it co-constitutes oneself. However, to say that one is only one's past would be to ignore a large part of reality (the present and the future), while saying that one's past is only what one was would entirely detach it from them now. A denial of one's own concrete past constitutes an inauthentic lifestyle, and the same goes for all other kinds of facticity (having a body (e.g. one that doesn't allow a person to run faster than the speed of sound), identity, values, etc.). Facticity is both a limitation and a condition of freedom. It is a limitation in that a large part of one's facticity consists of things one couldn't have chosen (birthplace, etc.), but a condition in the sense that one's values most likely will depend on it. However, even though one's facticity is "set in stone" (as being past, for instance), it cannot determine a person: The value ascribed to one's facticity is still ascribed to it freely by that person. As a n example, consider two men, one of whom has no memory of his past and the other remembers everything. They have both committed many crimes, but the first man, knowing nothing about this, leads a rather normal life while the second man, feeling trapped by his own past, continues a life of crime, blaming his own past for "trapping" him in this life. There is nothing essential about his committing crimes, but he ascribes this meaning to his past. However, to disregard one's facticity when one, in the continual process of self-making, projects oneself into the future, would be to put oneself in denial of oneself, and would thus be inauthentic. In other words, the origin of one's projection will still have to be one's facticity, although in the mode of not being it (essentially). Another aspect of facticity is that it entails angst, both in the sense that freedom "produces" angst when limited by facticity, and in the sense that the lack of the possibility of having facticity to "step in" for one to take responsibility for something one has done also produces angst.
What is not implied in this account of existential freedom, however, is that one's values are immutable; a consideration of one's values may cause one to reconsider and change them. A consequence of this fact is that one is responsible for not only one's actions, but also the values one holds. This entails that a reference to common values doesn't excuse the individual's actions: Even though these are the values of the society of which the individual is part, they are also her/his own in the sense that she/he could choose them to be different at any time. Thus, the focus on freedom in existentialism is related to the limits of the responsibility one bears as a result of one's freedom: the relationship between freedom and responsibility is one of interdependency, and a clarification of freedom also clarifies that for which one is responsible. The existentialist concept of freedom is often misunderstood as meaning that anything is possible and where values are inconsequential to choice and action. This interpretation of the concept is often related to the insistence on the absurdity of the world and the assumption that there exist no relevant or absolutely good or bad values. However, that there are no values to be found in the world in-itself does not mean that there are no values: We are usually brought up with certain values, and even though we cannot justify them ultimately, they will be "our" values. Authenticity
The theme of authentic existence is common to many existentialist thinkers. It is often taken to mean that one has to "find oneself" and then live in accordance with this self. What is meant by authenticity is that in acting, one should act as oneself, not as One acts or as one's genes or any other essence requires. The authentic act is one that is in accordance with one's freedom. Of course, as a condition of freedom is facticity, this includes one's facticity, but not to the degree that this facticity can in any way determine one's choices (in the sense that one could then blame one's background for making the choice one made). The role of facticity in relation to authenticity involves letting one's actual values come into play when one makes a choice (instead of, like Kierkegaard's Aesthete, "choosing" randomly), so that one also takes responsibility for the act instead of choosing either-or without allowing the options to have different values. In contrast to this, the inauthentic is the denial to live in accordance with one's freedom. This can take many forms, from pretending choices are meaningless or random, through convincing oneself that some form of determinism is true, to a sort of "mimicry" where one acts as " One should." How "One" should act is often determined by an image one has of how one such as oneself (say, a bank manager, lion tamer, prostitute, etc.) acts. This image usually corresponds to some sort of social norm, but this does not mean that all acting in accordance with social norms is inauthentic: The main point is the attitude one takes to one's own freedom and responsibility, and the extent to which one acts in accordance with this freedom. The Other and the Look
The Other (when written with a capital "o") is a concept more properly belonging to phenomenology and its account of intersubjectivity. However, the concept has seen widespread use in existentialist writings, and the conclusions drawn from it differ slightly from the phenomenological accounts. The experience of the Other is the experience of another free subject who inhabits the same world as a person does. In its most basic form, it is this experience of the Other that constitutes intersubjectivity and objectivity. To clarify, when one experiences someone else, and this Other person experiences the world (the same world that a person experiences), only from "over there", the world itself is constituted as objective in that it is something that is "there" as identical for both of the subjects; a person experiences the other person as experiencing the same as he or she does. This experience of the Other's look is what is termed the Look (sometimes the Gaze). While this experience, in its basic phenomenological sense, constitutes the world as objective, and oneself as objectively existing subjectivity (one experiences oneself as seen in the Other's Look in precisely the same way that one experiences the Other as seen by him, as subjectivity), in existentialism, it also acts as a kind of limitation of one's freedom. This is because the Look tends to objectify what it sees. As such, when one experiences oneself in the Look, one doesn't experience oneself as nothing (no thing), but as something. Sartre's own example of a man peeping at someone through a keyhole can help clarify this: at first, this man is entirely caught up in the situation he is in; he is in a pre-reflexive state where his entire consciousness is directed at what goes on in the room. Suddenly, he hears a creaking floorboard behind him, and he becomes aware of himself as seen by the Other . He is thus filled with shame for he perceives himself as he would perceive someone else doing what he was doing, as a Peeping Tom. The Look is then co-constitutive of one's facticity.
Another characteristic feature of the Look is that no Other really needs to have been there: It is quite possible that the creaking floorboard was nothing but the movement of an old house; the Look isn't some kind of mystical telepathic experience experience of the actual way the other sees one (there may also have been someone there, but he could have not noticed that the person was there). It is only one's perception of the way another might perceive him. The concept of the 'Other' has been most comprehensively used by feminist existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. She used this concept in great detail in her feminist book "The Second Sex" to show how, despite women's sincere efforts at proving themselves as human beings firmly established in their own rights, men continue to relegate to them a status of a lower, inferior "other". It is in this context that this feminist-existential term term has to be understood. Angst
"Existential angst", angst", sometimes called dread, anxiety or even anguish, is a term that is common to many existentialist thinkers. It is generally held to be a negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom and responsibility. The archetypal example is the experience one has when standing on a cliff where one not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing oneself off. In this experience experience that "nothing is holding me back", one senses the lack of anything that predetermines predetermines one to either throw oneself off or to stand still, and one experiences experiences one's own freedom. It can also be seen in relation to the previous point how angst is before nothing, and this is what sets it apart from fear which has an object. While in the case of fear, one can take definitive measures measures to remove the object of fear, in the case of angst, no such "constructive" measures are possible. The use of the word "nothing" in this context relates both to the inherent insecurity about the consequences consequences of one's actions, and to the fact that, in experiencing one's freedom as angst, one also realizes that one will be fully responsible for these consequences; there is nothing in a person (his or her genes, for instance) that acts in her or his stead, and that he or she can "blame" if something goes wrong. Not every choice is perceived as having dreadful possible consequences (and, it can be claimed, human lives would be unbearable if every choice facilitated dread), but that doesn't change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action. One of the most extensive treatments of the existentialist notion of Angst is found in Søren Kierkegaard's Kierkegaard's monumental work Begrebet Angest . Despair
Commonly defined as a loss of hope, hope ,[22] Despair in existentialism is more specifically related to the reaction to a breakdown in one or more of the defining qualities of one's self or identity. If a person is invested in being a particular thing, such as a bus driver or an upstanding citizen, and then finds his being-thing compromised, he would normally be found in state of despair —a hopeless state. For example, a singer who loses her ability to sing may despair if she has nothing else to fall back on, nothing on which to rely for her identity. Such a person finds himself or herself unable to be that which defined his or her being. What sets the existentialist existentialist notion of despair apart from the conventional definition is that existentialist existentialist despair is a state one is in even when he isn't overtly in despair. So long as a person's identity depends on qualities that can crumble, he is considered to be in perpetual despair. And as there is, in Sartrean terms, no human essence found in conventional reality on which to constitute the individual's sense of identity, despair is a universal human condition. As Kierkegaard defines it in his Either/or: "Any life-view with a condition outside it is despair." despair."[23] In other words, it is possible to be in despair without despairing. Theological and Atheistic existentialism
Although Søren Kierkegaard was personally a Christian philosopher and Lutheran theologian, his existential philosophy appeals to many other thinkers of different religious and atheistic beliefs .[24] Jewish existentialism applies the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard to analyze concepts and stories in the Hebrew Bible. One of the most prominent Jewish existential thinkers was the philosopher Martin Buber. An existentialist reading of the Bible would demand that the reader recognize that he is an existing subject studying the words more as a recollection of possible events. This is in contrast to looking at a collection of "truths" which are outside and unrelated to the reader, but may develop a sense of
reality/God. reality/God.[25] Such a reader is not obligated to follow the commandments as if an external agent is forcing them upon him, but as though they are inside him and guiding him from inside. This is the task Kierkegaard takes up when he asks: "Who has the more difficult task: the teacher who lectures on earnest things a meteor's distance from everyday life-or the learner who should put it to use?" use? "[26] From an existentialist perspective, the Bible would not become an authority in an individual's life until that individual authorizes the Bible to be such. Existentialism has had a significant influence on theology, notably on postmodern Christianity and on theologians and religious thinkers such as Nikolai Berdyaev, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Wilfrid Desan and John Macquarrie. The works of atheistic existential thought intend to reveal that the purpose of one's life on Earth is a concept that only the individual could determine through his or her experiences. Individuals are thus defined by their choices alone. Jean-Paul Sartre's Sartre's principle thatexistence thatexistence precedes essence, as he explains in "Existentialism is a Humanism", provides a popular theme for many existentialist writers. Relation to nihilism
Although nihilism and existentialism are distinct philosophies, they are often confused with one another. A primary cause of confusion is that Friedrich Nietzsche is an important philosopher in both fields, but also the existentialist insistence on the absurd and the inherent meaninglessness of the world. Existentialist philosophers often stress the importance of Angst of Angst as signifying the absolute lack of any objective ground for action, a move that is often reduced to a moral or an existential nihilism. A pervasive theme in the works of existentialist philosophy, however, is to persist through encounters with the absurd, as seen in Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus ("One must imagine Sisyphus happy"), happy"),[27] and it is only very rarely that existentialist philosophers dismiss morality or one's self-created meaning: Kierkegaard regained a sort of morality in the religious (although he wouldn't himself agree that it was ethical; the religious suspends the ethical), and Sartre's Sartre's final words in Being and Nothingness are "All these questions, which refer us to a pure and not an accessory (or impure) reflection, can find their reply only on the ethical plane. We shall devote to them a future work." work. "[28] Opposition to positivism and rationalism
Emphasizing action, freedom, and decision as fundamental, existentialists oppose positivism and rationalism. That is, they argue against definitions of human beings as primarily rational. Rather, existentialists existentialists look at where people find meaning. Existentialism asserts that people actually make decisions based on the meaning to them rather than rationally. The rejection of reason as the source of meaning is a common theme of existentialist thought, as is the focus on the feelings of anxiety of anxiety and dread that we feel in the face of our own radical freedom and our awareness of death. Kierkegaard advocated rationality as means to interact with the objective world (e.g. in the natural sciences), but when it comes to existential problems, reason is insufficient: "Human reason has boundaries". boundaries".[29] Like Kierkegaard, Sartre saw problems with rationality, calling it a form of "bad faith", an attempt by the self to impose structure on a world of phenomena — "the Other" — that is fundamentally irrational and random. According to Sartre, rationality and other forms of bad faith hinder people from finding meaning in freedom. To try to suppress their feelings of anxiety and dread, people confine themselves within everyday experience, Sartre asserts, thereby relinquishing their freedom and acquiescing to being possessed in one form or another by "the Look" of "the Other" (i.e. possessed by another person — or at least one's idea of that other person). Etymology [30][31][32] The term "existentialism" was coined by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel in the mid-1940s. mid-1940s.[30][31][32] It was adopted by Jean-Paul Sartre who, on October 29, 1945, discussed his own existentialist position in a lecture to the Club Maintenant in Paris. The lecture was published as L'existentialisme (Existentialism is L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism [33] a Humanism), Humanism), a short book which did much to popularize existentialist thought. thought.
Some scholars argue that the term should be used only to refer to the cultural movement in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s associated with the works of the philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus. Camus.[3] Other scholars extend the term to Kierkegaard, and yet others extend it as far back as Socrates. Socrates .[34] However, the term is often identified with the philosophical views of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre .[3] History
19th century Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche were two of the first philosophers considered fundamental to the existentialist movement, though neither used the term "existentialism" and it is unclear whether they would have supported the existentialism of the 20th century. They focused on subjective human experience rather than the objective truths of mathematics and science, which they believed were too detached or observational to truly get at the human experience. Like Pascal, they were interested in people's quiet struggle with the apparent meaninglessness of life and the use of diversion to escape from boredom. Unlike Pascal, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche also considered the role of making free choices, particularly regarding fundamental values and beliefs, and how such choices change the nature and identity of the chooser. chooser.[35] Kierkegaard's knight of faith and Nietzsche's Übermensch are representative of people who exhibit Freedom, in that they define the nature of their own existence. Nietzsche's idealized individual invents his or her own values and creates the very terms under which they excel. By contrast, Kierkegaard, opposed to the level of abstraction in Hegel, and not nearly as hostile (actually welcoming) to Christianity as Nietzsche, argues through a pseudonym that the objective certainty of religious truths (specifically Christian) is not only impossible, but even founded on logical paradoxes. Yet he continues to imply that a leap of faith is a possible means for an individual to reach a higher stage of existence which transcends and contains both an aesthetic and ethical value of life. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were also precursors to other intellectual movements, including postmodernism, and various strands of psychology. of psychology. However, Kierkegaard believed that an individual should live in accordance with his or her thinking. This point of view is forced upon religious individuals much more often than upon philosophers, psychologists or scientists. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The first important literary author also important to existentialism was the Russian Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky.[36] Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground portrays a man unable to fit into society and unhappy with the identities he creates for himself. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his book on existentialism Existentialism is a of existential crisis. Sartre attributes Humanism, quoted Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as an example of existential Ivan Karamazov's claim, "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted" permitted "[37] to Dostoyevsky himself. Other Dostoyevsky novels covered issues raised in existentialist philosophy while presenting story lines divergent from secular existentialism: for example, in Crime and Punishment , the protagonist Raskolnikov experiences an existential crisis and then moves toward a Christian Orthodox worldview similar to that advocated by Dostoyevsky himself.[citation needed ] Early 20th century
In the first decades of the 20th century, a number of philosophers and writers explored existentialist ideas. The Spanish philosopherMiguel philosopherMiguel de Unamuno y Jugo, in his 1913 book The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations , emphasized the life of "flesh and bone" as opposed to that of abstract rationalism. Unamuno rejected systematic philosophy in favor of the individual's quest for faith. He retained a sense of the tragic, even absurd nature of the quest, symbolized by his enduring interest in Cervantes' fictional character Don Quixote. A novelist, poet and dramatist as well as philosophy professor at the University of Salamanca, Unamuno wrote a short story about a priest's crisis of faith, "Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr", Martyr" , which has been collected in anthologies of existentialist existentialist fiction. Another Spanish thinker, Ortega y Gasset, writing in 1914, held that human existence must always be defined as the individual person combined with the concrete circumstances of his life: "Yo soy yo y mis circunstancias " ("I am myself and my circumstances"). Sartre likewise believed that human existence is not an abstract matter, but is always situated, also many thought his plays were absurd (" en situación"). Although Martin Buber wrote his major philosophical works in German, and studied and taught at the Universities of Berlin andFrankfurt, and Frankfurt, he stands apart from the mainstream of German philosophy. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1878, he was also a scholar of Jewish culture and involved at various times in Zionism and Hasidism. In 1938, he moved permanently to Jerusalem. His best-known philosophical work was the short book I and Thou, published in 1922. For Buber, the fundamental fact of human existence, too readily overlooked by scientific rationalism and abstract philosophical thought, is "man with man", a dialogue which [38] Zwischenmenschliche" ). takes place in the so-called "sphere of between" ( "das Zwischenmenschliche"
Two Ukrainian/Russian thinkers, Lev Shestov and Nikolai Berdyaev, became well known as existentialist thinkers during their post-Revolutionary exiles in Paris. Shestov, born into a Ukrainian-Jewish family in Kiev, had launched an attack on rationalism and systematization in philosophy as early as 1905 in his book of aphorisms All Things Are Possible. Berdyaev, also from Kiev but with a background in the Eastern Orthodox Church, drew a radical distinction between the world of spirit and the everyday world of objects. Human freedom, for Berdyaev, is rooted in the realm of spirit, a realm independent of scientific notions of causation. To the extent the individual human being lives in the objective world, he is estranged from authentic spiritual freedom. "Man" is not to be interpreted naturalistically, but as a being created in God's image, an originator of free, creative acts.[39] He published a major work on these themes, The Destiny of Man, in 1931. Gabriel Marcel, long before coining the term "existentialism", introduced important existentialist themes to a French audience in his early essay "Existence and Objectivity" (1925) and in his Metaphysical Journal (1927).[40] A dramatist as well as a philosopher, Marcel found his philosophical starting point in a condition of metaphysical alienation: the human individual searching for harmony in a transient life. Harmony, for Marcel, was to be sought through "secondary reflection", a "dialogical" rather than "dialectical" approach to the world, characterized by "wonder and astonishment" and open to the "presence" of other people and of God rather than merely to "information" about them. For Marcel, such presence implied more than simply being there (as one thing might be in the presence of another thing); it connoted "extravagant" availability, and the willingness to put oneself at the disposal of the other.[41] Marcel contrasted "secondary reflection" with abstract, scientific-technical "primary reflection" which he associated with the activity of the abstract Cartesian ego. For Marcel, philosophy was a concrete activity undertaken by a sensing, feeling human being incarnate — embodied — in a concrete world.[40][42] Although Jean-Paul Sartre adopted the term "existentialism" for his own philosophy in the 1940s, Marcel's thought has been described as "almost diametrically opposed" to that of Sartre .[40] Unlike Sartre, Marcel was a Christian, and became a Catholic convert in 1929. In Germany, the psychologist and philosopher Karl Jaspers — who later described existentialism as a "phantom" created by the public[43] — called his own thought, heavily influenced by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Existenzphilosophie. For Jaspers, "Existenz-philosophy is the way of thought by means of which man seeks to become himself...This way of thought does not cognize objects, but elucidates and makes actual the being of the thinker."[44] Jaspers, a professor at the University of Heidelberg, was acquainted with Martin Heidegger, who held a professorship at Marburg before acceding to Husserl's chair at Freiburg in 1928. They held many philosophical discussions, but later became estranged over Heidegger's support of National Socialism. They shared an admiration for Kierkegaard,[45] and in the 1930s, Heidegger lectured extensively on Nietzsche. Nevertheless, the extent to which Heidegger should be considered an existentialist is debatable. In Being and Time he presented a method of rooting philosophical explanations in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed in terms of existential categories (existentiale); and this has led many commentators to treat him as an important figure in the existentialist movement. After the Second World War
Following the Second World War, existentialism became a well-known and significant philosophical and cultural movement, mainly through the public prominence of two French writers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, who wrote best-selling novels, plays and widely read journalism as well as theoretical texts. These years also saw the growing reputation of Heidegger's book Being and Timeoutside of Germany.[citation needed ] Sartre dealt with existentialist themes in his 1938 novel Nausea and the short stories in his 1939 collection The Wall , and had published his treatise on existentialism, Being and Nothingness, in 1943, but it was in the two years following the liberation of Paris from the German occupying forces that he and his close associates — Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others — became internationally famous as the leading figures of a movement known as existentialism.[46]In a very short space of time, Camus and Sartre in particular became the leading public intellectuals of post-war France, achieving by the end of 1945 "a fame that reached across all audiences."[47]Camus was an editor of the most popular leftist (former French Resistance) newspaper Combat ; Sartre launched his journal of leftist thought, Les Temps Modernes, and two weeks later
gave the widely reported lecture on existentialism and secular humanism to a packed meeting of the Club Maintenant. Beauvoir wrote that "not a week passed without the newspapers discussing us" ;[48]existentialism became "the first media craze of the postwar era."[49] By the end of 1947, Camus' earlier fiction and plays had been reprinted, his new play Caligula had been performed and his novel The Plague published; the first two novels of Sartre's The Roads to Freedom trilogy had appeared, as had Beauvoir's novel The Blood of Others . Works by Camus and Sartre were already appearing in foreign editions. The Paris-based existentialists had become famous.[46] Sartre had traveled to Germany in 1930 to study the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger,[50] and he included critical comments on their work in his major treatise Being and Nothingness. Heidegger's thought had also become known in French philosophical circles through its use by Alexandre Kojève in explicating Hegel in a series of lectures given in Paris in the 1930s .[51] The lectures were highly influential; members of the audience included not only Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, but Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Louis Althusser, André Breton and Jacques Lacan.[52] A selection from Heidegger's Being and Time was published in French in 1938, and his essays began to appear in French philosophy journals. Heidegger read Sartre's work and was initially impressed, commenting: "Here for the first time I encountered an independent thinker who, from the foundations up, has experienced the area out of which I think. Your work shows such an immediate comprehension of my philosophy as I have never before encountered. "[53] Later, however, in response to a question posed by his French follower Jean Beaufret,[54] Heidegger distanced himself from Sartre's position and existentialism in general in his Letter on Humanism.[55] Heidegger's reputation continued to grow in France during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s, Sartre attempted to reconcile existentialism and Marxism in his work Critique of Dialectical Reason. A major theme throughout his writings was freedom and responsibility. Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their falling-out, and wrote several works with existential themes including The Rebel , The Stranger , The Myth of Sisyphus, and Summer in Algiers. Camus, like many others, rejected the existentialist label, and considered his works to be concerned with facing the absurd. In the titular book, Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth of Sisyphus to demonstrate the futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned for eternity to roll a rock up a hill, but when he reaches the summit, the rock will roll to the bottom again. Camus believes that this existence is pointless but that Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it. The first half of the book contains an extended rebuttal of what Camus took to be existentialist philosophy in the works of Kierkegaard, Shestov, Heidegger, and Jaspers. Simone de Beauvoir, an important existentialist who spent much of her life as Sartre's partner, wrote about feminist and existentialist ethics in her works, including The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity . Although often overlooked due to her relationship with Sartre [citation needed ], de Beauvoir integrated existentialism with other forms of thinking such as feminism, unheard of at the time, resulting in alienation from fellow writers such as Camus[citation needed ]. Paul Tillich, an important existentialist theologian following Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, applied existentialist concepts to Christian theology, and helped introduce existential theology to the general public. His seminal work The Courage to Be follows Kierkegaard's analysis of anxiety and life's absurdity, but puts forward the thesis that modern humans must, via God, achieve selfhood in spite of life's absurdity. Rudolf Bultmann used Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's philosophy of existence to demythologize Christianity by interpreting Christian mythical concepts into existentialist concepts. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an existential phenomenologist, was for a time a companion of Sartre. His understanding of Husserl'sphenomenology was far greater than that of Merleau-Ponty's fellow existentialists.[vague] It has been said that his work Humanism and Terror greatly influenced Sartre. However, in later years they were to disagree irreparably, dividing many existentialists such as de Beauvoir [citation needed ], who sided with Sartre. Colin Wilson, an English writer, published his study The Outsider in 1956, initially to critical acclaim. In this book and others (e.g.Introduction to the New Existentialism ), he attempted to reinvigorate what he perceived as a
pessimistic philosophy and bring it to a wider audience. He was not, however, academically trained, and his work was attacked by professional philosophers for lack of rigor and critical standards.[56] ]Influence outside philosophy Art, Film and television
The French director Jean Genet's 1950 fantasy-erotic film Un chant d'amour shows two inmates in solitary cells whose only contact is through a hole in their cell wall, who are spied on by the prison warden. Reviewer James Travers calls the film a "...visual poem evoking homosexual desire and existentialist suffering" which "... conveys the bleakness of an existence in a godless universe with painful believability"; he calls it "... probably the most effective fusion of existentialist philosophy and cinema."[57] Stanley Kubrick's 1957 anti-war film Paths of Glory "illustrates, and even illuminates...existentialism" by examining the "necessary absurdity of the human condition" and the "horror of war" .[58] The film tells the story of a fictional World War I French army regiment which is ordered to attack an impregnable German stronghold; when the attack fails, three soldiers are chosen at random, court-martialed by a "kangaroo court", and executed by firing squad. The film examines existentialist ethics, such as the issue of whether objectivity is possible and the "problem of authenticity".[58] On the lighter side, the British comedy troupe Monty Python have explored existentialist themes throughout their works, from many of the sketches in their original television show, Monty Python's Flying Circus , to their 1983 film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life .[59] Of the many adjectives (some listed in the introduction above) that might indicate an existential tone, the one utilized the most by the group is that of the absurd. Another related comedy would be Office Space. Some contemporary films dealing with existentialist issues include Fight Club, I ♥ Huckabees, Waking Life, The [60] Matrix , Ordinary People and Life in a Day . Likewise, films throughout the 20th century such as The Seventh Seal , Ikiru, Taxi Driver , High Noon, Easy Rider , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , A Clockwork Orange, Groundhog [61] Day , Apocalypse Now , Badlands, and Blade Runner also have existentialist qualities. Notable directors known for their existentialist films include Ingmar Bergman, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Akira Kurosawa, Terrence Malick, Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Hideaki Anno, Wes Anderson, and Woody Allen.[62] Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York focuses on the protagonist's desire to find existential meaning.[63] Literature
Existentialist perspectives are also found in literature to varying degrees. Jean-Paul Sartre's 1938 novel Nausea[64] was "steeped in Existential ideas", and is considered an accessible way of grasping his philosophical stance.[65] Since 1970, much cultural activity in art, cinema, and literature contains postmodernist and existentialist elements. Books such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) (now republished as Blade Runner ) by Philip K. Dick and Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk all distort the line between reality and appearance while simultaneously espousing strong existentialist themes. Ideas from such thinkers as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Michel Foucault, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Herbert Marcuse, Gilles Deleuze, and Eduard von Hartmann permeate the works of artists such as Chuck Palahniuk, David Lynch, Crispin Glover, and Charles Bukowski, and one often finds in their works a delicate balance between distastefulness and beauty. Theatre
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote No Exit in 1944, an existentialist play originally published in French as Huis Clos (meaning In Camera or "behind closed doors") which is the source of the popular quote, "Hell is other people." (In French, "L'enfer, c'est les autres"). The play begins with a Valet leading a man into a room that the audience soon realizes is in hell. Eventually he is joined by two women. After their entry, the Valet leaves and the door is shut and locked. All three expect to be tortured, but no torturer arrives. Instead, they realize they are there to torture each other, which they do effectively, by probing each other's sins, desires, and unpleasant memories. Existentialist themes are displayed in the Theatre of the Absurd, notably in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot , in which two men divert themselves while they wait expectantly for someone (or something) named Godot who never arrives. They claim Godot to be an acquaintance, but in fact hardly know him, admitting they would not
recognize him if they saw him. Samuel Beckett, once asked who or what Godot is, replied, "If I knew, I would have said so in the play." To occupy themselves, the men eat, sleep, talk, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide—anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay" .[66] The play "exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos."[67] The play also illustrates an attitude toward human experience on earth: the poignancy, oppression, camaraderie, hope, corruption, and bewilderment of human experience that can be reconciled only in the mind and art of the absurdist. The play examines questions such as death, the meaning of human existence and the place of God in human existence. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist tragicomedy first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966.[68] The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet . Comparisons have also been drawn to Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot , for the presence of two central characters who almost appear to be two halves of a single character. Many plot features are similar as well: the characters pass time by playing Questions, impersonating other characters, and interrupting each other or remaining silent for long periods of time. The two characters are portrayed as two clowns or fools in a world that is beyond their understanding. They stumble through philosophical arguments while not realizing the implications, and muse on the irrationality and randomness of the world. Jean Anouilh's Antigone also presents arguments founded on existentialist ideas .[69] It is a tragedy inspired by Greek mythology and the play of the same name (Antigone, by Sophocles) from the 5th century B.C. In English, it is often distinguished from its antecedent by being pronounced in its original French form, approximately "AnteGŌN." The play was first per formed in Paris on 6 February 1944, during the Nazi occupation of France. Produced under Nazi censorship, the play is purposefully ambiguous with regards to the rejection of authority (represented by Antigone) and the acceptance of it (represented by Creon). The parallels to the French Resistance and the Nazi occupation have been drawn. Antigone rejects life as desperately meaningless but without affirmatively choosing a noble death. The crux of the play is the lengthy dialogue concerning the nature of power, fate, and choice, during which Antigone says that she is "... disgusted with [the]...promise of a humdrum happiness"; she states that she would rather die than live a mediocre existence. Critic Martin Esslin in his book Theatre of the Absurd pointed out how many contemporary playwrights such as Samuel Beckett,Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov wove into their plays the existentialist belief that we are absurd beings loose in a universe empty of real meaning. Esslin noted that many of these playwrights demonstrated the philosophy better than did the plays by Sartre and Camus. Though most of such playwrights, subsequently labeled "Absurdist" (based on Esslin's book), denied affiliations with existentialism and were often staunchly anti-philosophical (for example Ionesco often claimed he identified more with 'Pataphysics or with Surrealism than with existentialism), the playwrights are often linked to existentialism based on Esslin's observation.[70] Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy Existential therapy
A major offshoot of existentialism as a philosophy is existentialist psychology and psychoanalysis, which first crystallized in the work of Otto Rank, Freud's closest associate for 20 years. Without awareness of the writings of Rank, Ludwig Binswanger was influenced byFreud, Edmund Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre. A later figure was Viktor Frankl, who briefly met Freud and studied with Jung as a young man.[71] His logotherapy can be regarded as a form of existentialist therapy. The existentialists would also influence social psychology, antipositivist micro-sociology, symbolic interactionism, and post-structuralism, with the work of thinkers such as Georg Simmel [72] andMichel Foucault. Foucault was a great reader of Kierkegaard even though he almost never refers this author, who nonetheless had for him an importance as secret as it was decisive.[73] An early contributor to existentialist psychology in the United States was Rollo May, who was strongly influenced by Kierkegaard andOtto Rank. One of the most prolific writers on techniques and theory of existentialist psychology in the USA is Irvin D. Yalom. Yalom states that Aside from their reaction against Freud's mechanistic, deterministic model of the mind and their assumption of a phenomenological approach in therapy, the existentialist analysts have little in common and have never been regarded as a cohesive ideological school. These thinkers - who include Ludwig Binswanger, Medard
Boss, Eugène Minkowski, V.E. Gebsattel, Roland Kuhn, G. Caruso, F.T. Buytendijk, G. Bally and Victor Frankl were almost entirely unknown to the American psychotherapeutic community until Rollo May's highly influential 1985 book Existence - and especially his introductory essay - introduced their work into this country.[74] A more recent contributor to the development of a European version of existentialist psychotherapy is the British-based Emmy van Deurzen. Anxiety's importance in existentialism makes it a popular topic in psychotherapy. Therapists often offer existentialist philosophy as an explanation for anxiety. The assertion is that anxiety is manifested of an individual's complete freedom to decide, and complete responsibility for the outcome of such decisions. Psychotherapists using an existentialist approach believe that a patient can harness his anxiety and use it constructively. Instead of suppressing anxiety, patients are advised to use it as grounds for change. By embracing anxiety as inevitable, a person can use it to achieve his full potential in life. Humanistic psychology also had major impetus from existentialist psychology and shares many of the fundamental tenets. Terror management theory, based on the writings of Ernest Becker and Otto Rank, is a developing area of study within the academic study of psychology. It looks at what researchers claim to be the implicit emotional reactions of people confronted with the knowledge that they will eventually die. Criticisms General criticisms
Logical positivists, such as Carnap and Ayer, say existentialists frequently are confused about the verb "to be" in their analyses of "being".[15] They argue that the verb is transitive and pre-fixed to a predicate (e.g., an apple is red ): without a predicate, the word is meaningless. Sartre's philosophy
Many critics argue Sartre's philosophy is contradictory. Specifically, they argue that Sartre makes metaphysical arguments despite his claiming that his philosophical views ignore metaphysics. Herbert Marcuse criticized Being and Nothingness (1943) by Jean-Paul Sartref or projecting anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature of existence itself: "Insofar as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory".[16] In Letter on Humanism, Heidegger criticized Sartre's existentialism: Existentialism says existence precedes essence. In this statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which, from Plato's time on, has said that essentia precedes existentia . Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it, he stays with metaphysics, in oblivion of the truth of Being. Critical Theory Paulo Freire Date: 1921-1997
A Brazilian committed to the cause of educating the impoverished peasants of his nation and collaborating with them in the pursuit of their liberation from what he regarded as "oppression," Freire is best known for his attack on what he called the "banking concept of education," in which the student was viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher. Freire also suggests that a deep reciprocity be inserted into our notions of teacher and student; he comes close to suggesting that the teacher-student dichotomy be completely abolished, instead promoting the roles of the participants in the classroom as the teacher-student (a teacher who learns) and the student-teacher (a learner who teaches). In its early, strong form this kind of classroom has sometimes been criticized on the grounds that it can mask rather than overcome the teacher's authority.
Aspects of the Freirian philosophy have been highly influential in academic debates over "participatory development" and development more generally. Freire's emphasis on what he describes as "emancipation" through interactive participation has been used as a rationale for the participatory focus of development, as it is held that 'participation' in any form can lead to empowerment of poor or marginalized groups. Freire was a proponent of critical pedagogy. Postmodernism Martin Heidegger Date: 1889-1976
Heidegger's philosophizing about education was primarily related to higher education. He believed that teaching and research in the university should be unified and aim towards testing and interrogating the "ontological assumptions presuppositions which implicitly guide research in each domain of knowledge. "
[16]
Normative Educational Philosophies
"Normative philosophies or theories of education may make use of the results of [philosophical thought] and of factual inquiries about human beings and the psychology of learning, but in any case they propound views about what education should be, what dispositions it should cultivate, why it ought to cultivate them, how and in whom it should do so, and what forms it should take. In a full-fledged philosophical normative theory of education, besides analysis of the sorts described, there will normally be propositions of the following kinds: 1. Basic normative premises about what is good or right; 2. Basic factual premises about humanity and the world; 3. Conclusions, based on these two kinds of premises, about the dispositions education should foster; 4. Further factual premises about such things as the psychology of learning and methods of teaching; and 5. Further conclusions about such things as the methods that education should use. "
[2]
Perennialism
Perennialists believe that one should teach the things that one deems to be of everlasting importance to all people everywhere. They believe that the most important topics develop a person. Since details of fact change constantly, these cannot be the most important. Therefore, one should teach principles, not facts. Since people are human, one should teach first about humans, not machines or techniques. Since people are people first, and workers second if at all, one should teach liberal topics first, not vocational topics. The focus is primarily on teaching reasoning and wisdom rather than facts, the liberal arts rather than vocational training. Allan Bloom
Alexander Sutherland Neill Date: 1930-1992
Bloom, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, argued for a traditionalGreat Booksbased liberal education in his lengthy essay The Closing of the American Mind . Progressivism
Educational progressivism is the belief that education must be based on the principle that humans are social animals who learn best in real-life activities with other people. Progressivists, like proponents of most educational theories, claim to rely on the best available scientific theories of learning. Most progressive educators believe that children learn as if they were scientists, following a process similar to John Dewey's
model of learning: 1) Become aware of the problem. 2) Define the problem. 3) Propose hypotheses to solve it. 4) Evaluate the consequences of the hypotheses from one's past experience. 5) Test the likeliest solution. Jean Piaget Date: 1896-1980
Jean Piaget was a Swiss developmental psychologist known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology". Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. As the Director of the International Bureau of Education, he declared in 1934 that "only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, [17]
whether violent, or gradual."
Piaget created the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in
Geneva in 1955 and directed it until 1980. According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget is "the great [18]
pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing. "
Jean Piaget defined himself as an epistemologist, interested in the process of the qualitative development of knowledge. As he says in the introduction of his book "Genetic Epistemology" (ISBN 978-0-393-00596-7): "What the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the different varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following to the next levels, including also the scientific knowledge."
Jerome Bruner Date: 1915-
Another important contributor to the inquiry method in education is Bruner. His books The Process of Education and Toward a Theory of Instruction are landmarks in conceptualizing learning and curriculum
development. He argued that any subject can be taught in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. This notion was an underpinning for his concept of the spiral curriculum which posited the idea that a curriculum should revisit basic ideas, building on them until the student had grasped the full formal concept. He emphasized intuition as a neglected but essential feature of productive thinking. He felt that interest in the material being learned was the best stimulus for learning rather than external motivation such as grades. Bruner developed the concept of discovery learning which promoted learning as a process of constructing new ideas based on current or past knowledge. Students are encouraged to discover facts and relationships and continually build on what they already know. Essentialism
Educational essentialism is an educational philosophy whose adherents believe that children should learn the traditional basic subjects and that these should be learned thoroughly and rigorously. An essentialist program normally teaches children progressively, from less complex skills to more complex. William Chandler Bagley Date: 1874-1946
William Chandler Bagley taught in elementary schools before becoming a professor of education at the University of Illinois, where he served as the Director of the School of Education from 1908 until 1917. He was a professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia, from 1917 to 1940. An opponent of pragmatism and progressive education, Bagley insisted on the value of knowledge for its own sake, not merely as an instrument, and he criticized his colleagues for their failure to emphasize systematic study of academic subjects. Bagley was a proponent of educational essentialism.
Social Reconstructionism and Critical Pedagogy
Critical pedagogy is an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action." Based in Marxist theory, critical pedagogy draws on radical democracy, anarchism, feminism, and other movements for social justice. Maria Montessori Date: 1870-1952
The Montessori method arose from Dr. Maria Montessori's discovery of what she referred to as "the child's true normal nature" in 1907,
[19]
which happened in the process of her experimental observation of young
children given freedom in an environment prepared with materials designed for their self-directed learning activity.
[20]
The method itself aims to duplicate this experimental observation of children to bring about,
sustain and support their true natural way of being .
[21]
Waldorf
Waldorf education (also known as Steiner or Steiner-Waldorf education) is a humanistic approach to pedagogy based upon the educational philosophy of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. Learning is interdisciplinary, integrating practical, artistic, and conceptual elements. The approach emphasizes the role of the imagination in learning, developing thinking that includes a creative as well as an analytic component. The educational philosophy's overarching goals are to provide young people the basis on which to develop into free, morally responsible and integrated individuals, and to help every child fulfill his or her unique destiny, the existence of which anthroposophy posits. Schools and teachers are given considerable freedom to define curricula within collegial structures. Rudolf Steiner Date: 1861-1925
Steiner founded a holistic educational impulse on the basis of his spiritual philosophy (anthroposophy) . Now known
as Steiner
or
Waldorf
education,
his
pedagogy
emphasizes
a
balanced
development
of cognitive, affective /artistic, and practical skills (head, heart, and hands). Schools are normally selfadministered by faculty; emphasis is placed upon giving individual teachers the freedom to develop creative methods. Steiner's theory of child development divides education into three discrete developmental stages predating but with close similarities to the stages of development described by Piaget. Early childhood education occurs through imitation; teachers provide practical activities and a healthy environment. Steiner believed that young children should meet only goodness. Elementary education is strongly arts-based, centered on the teacher's creative authority; the elementary school-age child should meet beauty. Secondary education seeks to develop the judgment, intellect, and practical idealism; the adolescent should meet truth. Democratic Education
Democratic education is a theory of learning and school governance in which students and staff participate freely and equally in a school democracy. In a democratic school, there is typically shared decision-making among students and staff on matters concerning living, working, and learning together.
A. S. Neill Date: 1883-1973
Neill founded Summerhill School, the oldest existing democratic school in Suffolk, England in 1921. He wrote a number of books that now define much of contemporary democratic education philosophy. Neill believed that the happiness of the child should be the paramount consideration in decisions about the child's upbringing, and that this happiness grew from a sense of personal freedom. He felt that deprivation of this sense of freedom during childhood, and the consequent unhappiness experienced by the repressed child, was responsible for many of the psychological disorders of adulthood. Classical Education
The Classical education movement advocates a form of education based in the traditions of Western culture, with a particular focus on education as understood and taught in the Middle Ages. The term "classical education" has been used in English for several centuries, with each era modifying the definition and adding its own selection of topics. By the end of the 18th century, in addition to the trivium and quadrivium of the Middle Ages, the definition of a classical education embraced study of literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, history, art, and languages. In the 20th and 21st centuries it is used to refer to a broad-based study of the liberal arts and sciences, as opposed to a practical or pre-professional program. Classical Education can be described as rigorous and systematic, separating children and their learning into three rigid categories, Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric. Charlotte Mason Date: 1842-1923
Mason was a British educator who invested her life in improving the quality of children's education. Her ideas led to a method used by some homeschoolers. Mason's philosophy of education is probably best summarized by the principles given at the beginning of each of her books. Two key mottos taken from those principles are "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life" and "Education is the science of relations." She believed that children were born persons and should be respected as such; they should also be taught the Way of the Will and the Way of Reason. Her motto for students was "I am, I can, I ought, I will." Charlotte Mason believed that children should be introduced to subjects through living books, not through the use of "compendiums, abstracts, or selections." She used abridged books only when the content was deemed inappropriate for children. She preferred that parents or teachers read aloud those texts (such as Plutarch and the Old Testament), making omissions only where necessary. Unschooling
Unschooling
is
a
range
allowing children to learn through
of educational philosophies
and
their
experiences,
natural
life
practices
centered including
on child
directed play, game play, household responsibilities, work experience, and social interaction, rather than through a more traditional school curriculum. Unschooling encourages exploration of activities led by the children themselves, facilitated by the adults. Unschooling differs from conventional schooling principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional gradingmethods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child. John Holt
In 1964 Holt published his first book, How Children Fail, asserting that the academic failure of schoolchildren was not despite the efforts of the schools, but actually because of the schools. Not surprisingly, How Children Fail ignited a firestorm of controversy. Holt was catapulted into the American national consciousness to the extent that he made appearances on major TV talk shows, wrote book reviews for Life magazine, and was a guest on the To Tell The Truth TV game show.
[22]
In his follow-up work, How
Children Learn, published in 1967, Holt tried to elucidate the learning process of children and why he
believed school short circuits that process. Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people
lives on from one generation to the next .
[1]
Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative
effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts. In its narrow, technical sense, education is the formal process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills, customs and values from one generation to another, e.g., instruction in schools. A right to education has been created and recognized by some jurisdictions: Since 1952, Article 2 of the first Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education. At the global level, the United Nations'International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 guarantees this right under its Article 13. Etymology Etymologically, the word education is derived from the Latin ēducātiō (―A breeding, a bringing up, a rearing) from ēdūcō (―I educate, I train‖) which is related to the homonym ēdūcō (―I lead forth, I take out; I [2]
raise up, I erect‖) from ē - (―from, out of‖) and dūcō (“I lead, I conduct”). Systems of schooling
Systems of schooling involve institutionalized teaching and learning in relation to a curriculum, which itself is established according to a predetermined purpose of the schools in the system. Purpose of Schools Examples of the purpose of schools include :
[3]
develop reasoning about perennial questions, master the
methods of scientific inquiry, cultivate the intellect, create positive change agents. The purpose and goal of the school is to teach pupils how to think. Curriculum
In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults. A curriculum is prescriptive, and is based on a more general syllabus which merely specifies what topics must be understood and to what level to achieve a particular grade or standard. An academic discipline is a branch of knowledge which is formally taught, either at the university, or via some other such method. Each discipline usually has several sub-disciplines or branches, and distinguishing lines are often both arbitrary and ambiguous. Examples of broad areas of academic disciplines include [4]
the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, social sciences, humanities and applied sciences.
Educational institutions may incorporate fine arts as part of K-12 grade curriculums or within majors at [5]
colleges and universities as electives. The various types of fine arts are music, dance, and theater .
Learning Modalities
There has been work on learning styles over the last two decades. Dunn and Dun n
[13]
focused on identifying
relevant stimuli that may influence learning and manipulating the school environment, at about the same time as Joseph Renzulli
[14]
recommended varying teaching strategies. Howard Gardner
[15]
identified individual
talents or aptitudes in his Multiple Intelligences theories. Based on the works of Jung, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Keirsey Temperament Sorter
[16]
focused on understanding how people's personality
affects the way they interact personally, and how this affects the way individuals respond to each other within
the
Delineator
[17]
learning
environment.
The
work
of David
Kolb and Anthony
Gregorc's
Type
follows a similar but more simplified approach.
It is currently fashionable to divide education into different learning "modes". The learning modalities
[18]
are
probably the most common:
Visual: learning based on observation and seeing what is being learned.
Auditory: learning based on listening to instructions/information.
Kinesthetic: learning based on hands-on work and engaging in activities. Although it is claimed that, depending on their preferred learning modality, different teaching techniques have different levels of effectiveness ,
[19]
recent research has argued "there is no adequate evidence base to
justify incorporating learning styles assessments into general educational practice. "
[20]
A consequence of this theory is that effective teaching should present a variety of teaching methods which cover all three learning modalities so that different students have equal opportunities to learn in a way that is effective for them.
[21]
Guy Claxton has questioned the extent that learning styles such as VAK are helpful,
particularly as they can have a tendency to label children and therefore restrict learning .
[22][23]
Instruction
Instruction is the facilitation of another's learning. Instructors in primary and secondary institutions are often called teachers,
and
they
direct
the
education
of students and
many subjects like reading, writing, mathematics, science and history.
Instructors
might in
draw
on
post-secondary
institutions might be called teachers, instructors, or professors, depending on the type of institution; and they primarily teach only their specific discipline. Studies from the United States suggest that the quality of teachers is the single most important factor affecting student performance, and that countries which score highly on international tests have multiple policies in place to ensure that the teachers they employ are as effective as possible.
[24][25]
With the passing of NCLB in the United States (No Child Left Behind), teachers
must be highly qualified. A popular way to gauge teaching performance is to use student evaluations of teachers (SETS), but these evaluations have been criticized for being counterproductive to learning and inaccurate due to student bias .
[26]
Technology
One of the most substantial uses in education is the use of technology. Also technology is an increasingly influential factor in education. Computers and mobile phones are used in developed countries both to complement established education practices and develop new ways of learning such as online education (a type of distance education). This gives students the opportunity to choose what they are interested in learning. The proliferation of computers also means the increase of programming and blogging. Technology offers
powerful learning tools that demand new skills and understandings of students, including Multimedia, and provides new ways to engage students, such as Virtual learning environments. One such tool are virtual manipulatives, which are an "interactive, Web-based visual representation of a dynamic object that presents opportunities for constructing mathematical knowledge" (Moyer, Bolyard, & Spikell, 2002). In short, virtual manipulatives are dynamic visual/pictorial replicas of physical mathematical manipulatives, which have long been used to demonstrate and teach various mathematical concepts. Virtual manipulatives can be easily accessed on the Internet as stand-alone applets, allowing for easy access and use in a variety of educational settings. Emerging research into the effectiveness of virtual manipulatives as a teaching tool have yielded promising results, suggesting comparable, and in many cases superior overall concept-teaching effectiveness compared to standard teaching methods.
[citation needed ]
duties
the
in
education
but
also
in
Technology is being used more not only in administrative
instruction
of
students.
The
use
of
technologies
such
as PowerPoint and interactive whiteboard is capturing the attention of students in the classroom. Technology is also being used in the assessment of students. One example is the Audience Response System (ARS), which allows immediate feedback tests and classroom discussions .
[27]
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a ―diverse set of tools and resources used to [28]
communicate, create, disseminate, store, and manage information.‖
These technologies include computers,
the Internet, broadcasting technologies (radio and television), and telephony. There is increasing interest in how computers and the Internet can improve education at all levels, in both formal and non-formal [29]
settings.
Older ICT technologies, such as radio and television, have for over forty years been used for open
and distance learning, although print remains the cheapest, most accessible and therefore most dominant [30]
delivery mechanism in both developed and developing countries .
In addition to classroom application and
growth of e-learning opportunities for knowledge attainment, educators involved in student affairs programming have recognized the increasing importance of computer usage with data generation for and about students. Motivation and retention counselors, along with faculty and administrators, can impact the potential academic success of students by provision of technology based experiences in the University setting.
[31]
The use of computers and the Internet is in its infancy in developing countries, if these are used at all, due to limited infrastructure and the attendant high costs of access. Usually, various technologies are used in combination rather than as the sole delivery mechanism. For example, the Kothmale Community Radio Internet uses both radio broadcasts and computer and Internet technologies to facilitate the sharing of information and provide educational opportunities in a rural community in Sri Lanka .
[32]
The Open University
of the United Kingdom (UKOU), established in 1969 as the first educational institution in the world wholly dedicated to open and distance learning, still relies heavily on print-based materials supplemented by radio, television and, in recent years, online programming .
[33]
Similarly, the Indira Gandhi National Open University
in India combines the use of print, recorded audio and video, broadcast radio and television, and audio conferencing technologies .
[34]
The term "computer-assisted learning" (CAL) has been increasingly used to describe the use of technology in teaching. Classrooms of the 21st century contain interactive white boards, tablets, mp3 players, laptops, etc. Wiki sites are another tool teachers can implement into CAL curriculums for students to understand communication and collaboration efforts of group work through electronic means.
[citation needed ]
Teachers are
encouraged to embed these technological devices and services in the curriculum in order to enhance students learning and meet the needs of various types of learners.
Education Theory
Education theory can refer to either a normative or a descriptive theory of education. In the first case, a theory means a postulation about what ought to be. It provides the "goals, norms, and standards for conducting the [35]
process of education."
In the second case, it means "an hypothesis or set of hypotheses that have been [36]
verified by observation and experiment. "
A descriptive theory of education can be thought of as a
conceptual scheme that ties together various "otherwise discrete particulars . . .For example, a cultural theory of education shows how the concept of culture can be used to organize and unify the variety of facts about how and what people learn."
[37]
Likewise, for example, there is the behaviorist theory of education that comes
from educational psychology and the functionalist theory of education that comes from sociology of education.
[38]
Economics and Education It has been argued that high rates of education are essential for countries to be able to achieve high levels [39]
of economic growth.
Empirical analyses tend to support the theoretical prediction that poor countries
should grow faster than rich countries because they can adopt cutting edge technologies already tried and tested by rich countries. However, technology transfer requires knowledgeable managers and engineers who are able to operate new machines or production practices borrowed from the leader in order to close the gap through imitation. Therefore, a country's ability to learn from the leader is a function of its stock of " human capital". Recent study of the determinants of aggregate economic growth have stressed the importance of [40]
fundamental economic institution s
and the role of cognitive skills .
[41]
At the individual level, there is a large literature, generally related back to the work of Jacob Mincer,
[42]
on
how earnings are related to the schooling and other human capital of the individual. This work has motivated a large number of studies, but is also controversial. The chief controversies revolve around how to interpret the impact of schooling.
[43][44]
Economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis famously argued in 1976 that there was a fundamental conflict in American schooling between the egalitarian goal of democratic participation and the inequalities implied [45]
by the continued profitability of capitalist production on the other .
History of Education
The history of education according to Dieter Lenzen, president of the Freie Universität Berlin1994, "began either millions of years ago or at the end of 1770". Education as a science cannot be separated from the educational traditions that existed before. Adults trained the young of their society in the knowledge and skills they would need to master and eventually pass on. The evolution of culture, and human beings as a species depended on this practice of transmitting knowledge. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation. Story-telling continued from one generation to the next. Oral language developed into written symbols and letters. The depth and breadth of knowledge that could be preserved and passed soon increased exponentially. When cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond the basic skills of communicating, trading, gathering food, religious practices, etc., formal education, and schooling, eventually followed. Schooling in this sense was already in place in Egypt between 3000 and 500BC.
Nowadays some kind of education is compulsory to all people in most countries. Due to population growth and the proliferation of compulsory education, UNESCO has calculated that in the next 30 years more people will receive formal education than in all of human history thus far .
[46]
Philosophy
John Locke's work Some Thoughts Concerning Education was written in 1693 and still reflects traditional education priorities in the Western world. As an academic field, philosophy of education is a "the philosophical study of education and its problems...its [47]
central subject matter is education, and its methods are those of philosophy".
"The philosophy of education
may be either the philosophy of the process of education or the philosophy of the discipline of education. That is, it may be part of the discipline in the sense of being concerned with the aims, forms, methods, or results of the process of educating or being educated; or it may be metadisciplinary in the sense of being concerned with the concepts, aims, and methods of the discipline."
[48]
As such, it is both part of the field of education and a
field of applied philosophy, drawing from fields of metaphysics, epistemology, axiology and the philosophical approaches (speculative, prescriptive, and/oranalytic) to address questions in and about pedagogy, education policy, and curriculum, as well as the process of learning, to name a few.
[49]
For example, it might study what
constitutes upbringing and education, the values and norms revealed through upbringing and educational practices, the limits and legitimization of education as an academic discipline, and the relation between education theory and practice. Educational Psychology
A class size experiment in the United States found that attending small classes for 3 or more years in the early [50]
grades increased high school graduation rates of students from low income families.
Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Although the terms "educational psychology" and "school psychology" are often used interchangeably, researchers and theorists are likely to be identified as educational psychologists, whereas practitioners in schools or school-related settings are identified as school psychologists. Educational psychology is concerned with the processes of educational attainment in the general population and in sub-populations such as gifted children and those with specific disabilities. Educational psychology can in part be understood through its relationship with other disciplines. It is informed primarily by psychology, bearing a relationship to that discipline analogous to the relationship between medicine and biology. Educational psychology in turn informs a wide range of specialities within educational
studies,
including instructional
design,
educational
technology,
curriculum
development, organizational learning, special education and classroom management. Educational psychology both draws from and contributes to cognitive science and the learning sciences. In universities, departments of educational psychology are usually housed within faculties of education, possibly accounting for the lack of representation of educational psychology content in introductory psychology textbooks (Lucas, Blazek, & Raley, 2006). Sociology of Education
The sociology of education is the study of how social institutions and forces affect educational processes and outcomes, and vice versa. By many, education is understood to be a means of overcoming handicaps,
achieving greater equality and acquiring wealth and status for all (Sargent 1994). Learners may be motivated by aspirations for progress and betterment. Learners can also be motivated by their interest in the subject area or specific skill they are trying to learn. In fact, learner-responsibility education models are driven by the interest of the learner in the topic to be studied .
[51]
Education is perceived as a place where children can develop according to their unique needs and potentialities .
[52]
The purpose of education can be to develop every individual to their full potential. The
understanding of the goals and means of educational socialization processes differs according to the sociological paradigm used. Pedagogy (
[1][2]
/ ˈpɛdəɡɒdʒi/ or / ˈpɛdəɡoʊdʒi/
) is the holistic science of education. It may be implemented
in practice as a personal, and holistic approach of socialising and upbringing children and young people. The term is not to be confused with social pedagogy, where society (represented by social pedagogues) holds a bigger part of the responsibility of the citizen's (often with mental or physical disabilities) well-being .
[5] [6]
Pedagogy is also occasionally referred to as the correct use of instructive strategies (see instructional theory). For example, Paulo Freire referred to his method of teaching adult humans as "critical pedagogy". In correlation with those instructive strategies the instructor's own philosophical beliefs of instruction are harbored and governed by the pupil's background knowledge and experience, situation, and environment, as [7]
well as learning goals set by the student and teacher. One example would be the Socratic schools of thought . Etymology and Generalizations The
word
comes
from
the Greek παιδαγωγέω ( paidagōgeō);
in
which παῖς
( país,
genitive
παιδός, paidos) means "child" and άγω (ágō) means "lead"; so it literally means "to lead the child". The Greek παιδαγωγός (pedagogue)
[8]
; in which παιδί (ped) means "child‖ and άγω (ago)
mean "to lead the child." Other relevant roots from Greek include μικρό παιδί child; κοριηζιών
[8]
or girl child; μικρό παιδί
[8]
[8]
[8]
means "lead"; would also
or toddler; αγόρι
[8]
or boy
or young child, indicating that παιδί is used with very young
children of both sexes. An instructor develops conceptual knowledge and manages the content of learning activities in pedagogical settings. This is consistent with the Cognitivism of Piaget, 1926, 1936/1975; Bruner, 1960, 1966, 1971, 1986; and Vygotsky, 1962 where sequential development of individual mental processes such as recognize, recall, analyze, reflect, apply, create, understand, and evaluate are scaffolded. The learning technique is adoptive learning of procedures, organization, and structure to develop an internal cognitive structure that strengthens synapses in the brain. The learner requires assistance to develop prior knowledge and integrate new knowledge using Verbal/Linguistic and Logical/Mathematical intelligences. The learner must learn how to learn while developing existing schema and adopting knowledge from both people and the environment. This [9]
is low order learning of conceptual knowledge, techniques, procedures, and algorithmic problem solving .
Education Policy refers to the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems.
Education occurs in many forms for many purposes through many institutions. Examples include early childhood education, kindergarten through to 12th grade, two and four year colleges or universities, graduate and professional education, adult education and job training. Therefore, education policy can directly affect the education people engage in at all ages.
Examples of areas subject to debate in education policy, specifically from the field of schools, include school size, class size, school choice, school privatization, tracking, teacher education and certification, teacher pay, teaching methods, curricular content, graduation requirements, school infrastructure investment, and the values that schools are expected to uphold and model. Education policy analysis is the scholarly study of education policy. It seeks to answer questions about the purpose of education, the objectives (societal and personal) that it is designed to attain, the methods for attaining them and the tools for measuring their success or failure. Research intended to inform education policy is carried out in a wide variety of institutions and in many academic disciplines. Important researchers are affiliated with departments of psychology, economics, sociology, and human development, in addition to schools and departments of education or public policy. Examples of education policy analysis may be found in such academic journalsas Education Policy Analysis Archives. Curriculum In formal education, a curriculum ( /k əˈrɪkjʉləm /; plural: curricula /k əˈrɪkjʉlə / or curriculums) is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults. A curriculum is prescriptive, and is based on a more general syllabus which merely specifies what topics must be understood and to what level to achieve a particular grade or standard. Curriculum has numerous definitions, which can be slightly confusing. In its broadest sense a curriculum may refer to all courses offered at a school. This is particularly true of schools at the university level, where the diversity of a curriculum might be an attractive point to a potential student.
A curriculum may also refer to a defined and prescribed course of studies, which students must fulfill in order to pass a certain level of education. For example, an elementary school might discuss how its curriculum, or its entire sum of lessons and teachings, is designed to improve national testing scores or help students learn the basics. An individual teacher might also refer to his or her curriculum, meaning all the subjects that will be taught during a school year. On the other hand, a high school might refer to a curriculum as the courses required in order to receive one‘s diploma. They might also refer to curriculum in exactly the same way as the elementary school, and use curriculum to mean both individual courses needed to pass, and the overall offering of courses, which help prepare a student for life after high school. Curriculum in formal schooling In formal education or schooling (cf. education), a curriculum is the set of courses, course work, and content offered at a school oruniversity. A curriculum may be partly or entirely determined by an external, authoritative body (i.e. the National Curriculum for Englandi n English schools). In the U.S., each state, with the individual school districts, establishes the curricula taught . with great participation of national
[5]
[4]
Each state, however, builds its curriculum
academic subject groups selected by the United States Department of
Education, e.g. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM )
[6]
for mathematical instruction.
In Australia each state's Education Department establishes curricula with plans for a National Curriculum in 2011. UNESCO's International Bureau of Education
[7]
has the primary mission of studying curricula and their
implementation worldwide. [8]
Curriculum
means two things: (i) the range of courses from which students choose what subject matters to
study, and (ii) a specific learning program. In the latter case, the curriculum collectively describes the teaching, learning, and assessment materials available for a given course of study.
Currently, a spiral curriculum is promoted as allowing students to revisit a subject matter's content at the different levels of development of the subject matter being studied. The constructivist approach, of the tycoil curriculum, proposes that children learn best via active engagement with the educational environment, i.e. discovery learning. Crucial to the curriculum is the definition of the course objectives that usually are expressed as learning outcomes' and normally include the program's assessment strategy . These outcomes and assessments are
grouped as units (or modules), and, therefore, the curriculum comprises a collection of such units, each, in turn, comprising a specialised, specific part of the curriculum. So, a typical curriculum includes communications, numeracy, information technology, and social skills units, with specific, specialized teaching of each. Core curriculum has typically been highly emphasized in Soviet and Russian universities and technical institutes. In this photo, a student has come to the university's main class schedule board on the first day of classes to find what classes he – and all students in his specialization (sub-major) – will attend this semester. Many educational institutions are currently trying to balance two opposing forces. On the one hand, some believe students should have a common knowledge foundation, often in the form of a core curriculum; on the other hand, others want students to be able to pursue their own educational interests, often through early specialty in a major, however, other times through the free choice of courses. This tension has received a large amount of coverage due to Harvard University's reorganization of its core requirements. An essential feature of curriculum design, seen in every college catalog and at every other level of schooling, is the identification of prerequisites for each course. These prerequisites can be satisfied by taking particular courses, and in some cases by examination, or by other means, such as work experience. In general, more advanced courses in any subject require some foundation in basic courses, but some coursework requires study in other departments, as in the sequence of math classes required for a physics major, or the language requirements for students preparing in literature, music, or scientific research. A more detailed curriculum design must deal with prerequisites within a course for each topic taken up. This in turn leads to the problems of course organization and scheduling once the dependencies between topics are known. In education, a core curriculum is a curriculum, or course of study, which is deemed central and usually made mandatory for all students of a school or school system. However, this is not always the case. For example, a school might mandate a music appreciation class, but students may opt out if they take a performing musical class, such as orchestra, band, chorus, etc. Core curricula are often instituted, at the primary and secondary levels, by school boards, Departments of Education, or other administrative agencies charged with overseeing education. Theoretical Approaches to Philosophy of Education
Theoretical questions concerning the teaching of philosophy in school have been debated at least since Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The modern debate in Germany in the 1970s gave rise to two competing approaches: the more traditional ,text-oriented approach by Wulff D. Rehfus and the more modern, dialogue-oriented approach by Ekkehard Martens. Newer approaches have been developed by Karel
van
der
Leeuw and Pieter
between traditionalistsand modernists is
Mostert as to
be
well
found
as Roland in
France,
W.
Henke.
with
the
A
similar
divide
proponents Jacques
Muglioni and Jacqueline Russ on the one side and France Rollinand Michel Tozzi on the other. In Italy, [3]
philosophy education is traditionally historically oriented in the sense of history of ideas. Theoretical
problems of philosophy education at college and university level are discussed in articles in the journal Teaching Philosophy. Didactic methods
Among the didactic methods in philosophy are the Socratic method and Hermeneutics. The pedagogic side of philosophy teaching is also of note to researchers in the field and philosophers of education Socratic method The Socratic method (also known as method of elenchus, elenctic method, Socratic irony, or Socratic debate), named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between
individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas. It is a dialectical method, often involving an oppositional discussion in which the defense of one point of view is pitted against the defense of another; one participant may lead another to contradict himself in some way, thus strengthening the inquirer's own point. The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. The Socratic method searches for general, commonly held truths that shape opinion, and scrutinizes them to determine their consistency with other beliefs. The basic form is a series of questions formulated as tests of logic and fact intended to help a person or group discover their beliefs about some topic, exploring the definitions or logoi(singular logos), seeking to characterize the general characteristics shared by various particular instances. The extent to which this method is employed to bring out definitions implicit in the interlocutors' beliefs, or to help them further their understanding, is called the method of maieutics. Aristotle attributed to Socrates the discovery of the method of definition and induction, which he regarded as the essence of the scientific method. Socrates began to engage in such discussions with his fellow Athenians after his friend from youth, Chaerephon, visited the Oracle of Delphi, which confirmed that no man in Greece was wiser than Socrates. Socrates saw this as a paradox, and began using the Socratic method to answer his [1][2] conundrum. Diogenes Laërtius, however, wrote that Protagoras invented the ―Socratic‖ method.
Plato famously formalized the Socratic elenctic style in prose — presenting Socrates as the curious questioner of some prominent Athenian interlocutor — in some of his early dialogues, such as Euthyphro and Ion, and the method is most commonly found within the so-called "Socratic dialogues", which generally portray Socrates engaging in the method and questioning his fellow citizens about moral and epistemological issues. The term Socratic questioning is used to describe a kind of questioning in which an original question is responded to as though it were an answer. This in turn forces the first questioner to reformulate a new question in light of the progress of the discourse. Method Elenchus (Ancient Greek: ἔλεγτος elengkhos "argument of disproof or refutation; cross-examining, testing, [3]
scrutiny esp. for purposes of refutation " ) is the central technique of the Socratic method. The Latin form elenchus (plural elenchi ) is used in English as the technical philosophical term .
[4]
In Plato's early dialogues, the elenchus is the technique Socrates uses to investigate, for example, the nature or definition of ethical concepts such as justice or virtue. According to one general characterization , following steps:
[5]
it has the
1. Socrates' interlocutor asserts a thesis, for example "Courage is endurance of the soul", which Socrates considers false and targets for refutation. 2. Socrates secures his interlocutor's agreement to further premises, for example "Courage is a fine thing" and "Ignorant endurance is not a fine thing". 3. Socrates then argues, and the interlocutor agrees, that these further premises imply the contrary of the original thesis, in this case it leads to: "courage is not endurance of the soul". 4. Socrates then claims that he has shown that his interlocutor's thesis is false and that its negation is true. One elenctic examination can lead to a new, more refined, examination of the concept being considered, in this case it invites an examination of the claim: "Courage is wise endurance of the soul". Most Socratic inquiries consist of a series of elenchi and typically end in aporia. Frede
[6]
insists that step #4 above makes nonsense of the aporetic nature of the early dialogues. If any claim
has been shown to be true then it cannot be the case that the interlocutors are in aporia, a state where they no longer know what to say about the subject under discussion. The exact nature of the elenchus is subject to a great deal of debate, in particular concerning whether it is a positive method, leading to knowledge, or a negative method used solely to refute false claims to knowledge. According to W. K. C. Guthrie's The Greek Philosophers, while sometimes erroneously believed to be a method by which one seeks the answer to a problem, or knowledge, the Socratic method was actually intended to demonstrate one's ignorance. Socrates, unlike the Sophists, did believe that knowledge was possible, but believed that the first step to knowledge was recognition of one's ignorance. Guthrie writes, "[Socrates] was accustomed to say that he did not himself know anything, and that the only way in which he was wiser than other men was that he was conscious of his own ignorance, while they were not. The essence of the Socratic method is to convince the interlocutor that whereas he thought he knew something, in fact he does not." Application Socrates generally applied his method of examination to concepts that seem to lack any concrete definition; e.g., the key moral concepts at the time, the virtues of piety, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. Such an examination challenged the implicit moral beliefs of the interlocutors, bringing out inadequacies and inconsistencies in their beliefs, and usually resulting in puzzlement known a saporia. In view of such inadequacies, Socrates himself professed his ignorance, but others still claimed to have knowledge. Socrates believed that his awareness of his ignorance made him wiser than those who, though ignorant, still claimed knowledge. While this belief seems paradoxical at first glance, it in fact allowed Socrates to discover his own errors where others might assume they were correct. This claim was known by the anecdote of the Delphic oracular pronouncement that Socrates was the wisest of all men. (Or, rather, that no man was wiser than Socrates.) Socrates used this claim of wisdom as the basis of his moral exhortation. Accordingly, he claimed that the chief goodness consists in the caring of the soul concerned with moral truth and moral understanding, that "wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state", and that "life without examination [dialogue] is not worth living". It is with this in mind that the Socratic method is employed.
The motive for the modern usage of this method and Socrates' use are not necessarily equivalent. Socrates rarely used the method to actually develop consistent theories, instead using myth to explain them. The Parmenides shows Parmenides using the Socratic method to point out the flaws in the Platonic theory of the Forms, as presented by Socrates; it is not the only dialogue in which theories normally expounded by Plato/Socrates are broken down through dialectic. Instead of arriving at answers, the method was used to break down the theories we hold, to go "beyond" the axioms and postulates we take for granted. Therefore, myth and the Socratic method are not meant by Plato to be incompatible; they have different purposes, and are often described as the "left hand" and "right hand" paths to the good and wisdom. Psychotherapy
The Socratic method, in the form of Socratic questioning, has been adapted for psychotherapy, most prominently in Classical Adlerian Psychotherapy, Cognitive Therapy
[7][8][9][10]
and Reality Therapy. It can be
used to clarify meaning, feeling, and consequences, as well as to gradually unfold insight, or explore alternative actions. Lesson plan elements for teachers in classrooms
This is a classical method of teaching that was designed to create autonomous thinkers. There are some crucial lesson plan elements to this form of teaching: Planning methodology
Plan and build the main course of thought through the material.
Build in potential fallacies (errors) for discovery and discussion.
Know common fallacies.
It may help to start or check with the conclusion and work backwards.
Methodology in operation
The teacher and student agree on the topic of instruction.
The student agrees to attempt to answer questions from the teacher.
The teacher and student are willing to accept any correctly-reasoned answer. That is, the reasoning process must be considered more important than pre-conceived facts or beliefs .
[11]
The teacher's questions should expose errors in the students' reasoning or beliefs, then formulate questions that the students cannot answer except by a correct reasoning process. The teacher has prior knowledge about the classical fallacies (errors) in reasoning.
Where the teacher makes an error of logic or fact, it is acceptable for a student to draw attention to the error. An informal discussion or similar vehicle of communication may not strictly be a (Socratic) dialogue. Therefore it is only suitable as a medium for the Socratic method where the principles are known by teachers and likely to be known by students. Additionally, the teacher is knowledgeable and proficient enough to spontaneously ask questions in order to draw conclusions and principles etc. from the students. Within such a discussion it is preferable pedagogically,
[citation needed ]
because the method encourages students to
reason critically rather than appeal to authority or use other fallacies. Learning Theory of Education
No topic is closer to the heart of psychology than learning, a relatively permanent change in an organisms [1]
behavior due to experience . In psychology and education, learning is commonly defined as a process that
brings together cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences and experiences for acquiring, enhancing, or making changes in one's knowledge, skills, values, and world views (Illeris, 2004; Ormrod, 1995). It is also thought of as the way in which information is absorbed, processed, and retained. "Learning Theories" are elaborate hypotheses that describe how exactly this procedure occurs. Learning theories have two chief values according to Hill (2002). One is in providing us with vocabulary and a conceptual framework for interpreting the examples of learning that we observe. The other is in suggesting where to look for solutions to practical problems. The theories do not give us solutions, but they do direct our attention to those variables that are crucial in finding solutions. There
are
three
main
categories
or
philosophical
frameworks
under
which
learning
theories
fall: behaviorism, cognitivism, andconstructivism. Behaviorism focuses only on the objectively observable aspects of learning. Cognitive theories look beyond behavior to explain brain-based learning. And constructivism views learning as a process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts. Merriam and Caffarella (1991) highlight four approaches or orientations to learning: Behaviourist, Cognitivist, Humanist, and Social/Situational. These approaches involve contrasting ideas as to the purpose and process of learning and education - and the role that educators may take .
[2]
Behaviorism
John Watson (1878-1959) coined the term "behaviorism." Critical of Wundt's emphasis on internal states, Watson insisted that psychology must focus on overt measureable behaviors. Watson believed that theorizing thoughts, intentions or other subjective experiences was unscientific
[3]
. Behaviorism as a theory was
primarily developed by B. F. Skinner. It loosely encompasses the work of people like Edward Thorndike, Tolman, Guthrie, and Hull. What characterizes these investigators are their underlying assumptions about the process of learning. In essence, three basic assumptions are held to be true.
[original research?]
First, learning is
manifested by a change in behavior. Second, the environment shapes behavior. And third, the principles of contiguity (how close in time two events must be for a bond to be formed) and reinforcement (any means of increasing the likelihood that an event will be repeated) are central to explaining the learning process. For behaviorism, learning is the acquisition of new behavior through conditioning. There are two types of possible conditioning: 1) Classical conditioning, where the behavior becomes a reflex response to stimulus as in the case of Pavlov's Dogs. Pavlov was interested in studying reflexes, when he saw that the dogs drooled without the proper stimulus. Although no food was in sight, their saliva still dribbled. It turned out that the dogs were reacting to lab coats. Every time the dogs were served food, the person who served the food was wearing a lab coat. Therefore, the dogs reacted as if food was on its way whenever they saw a lab coat.In a series of experiments, Pavlov then tried to figure out how these phenomena were linked. For example, he struck a bell when the dogs were fed. If the bell was sounded in close association with their meal, the dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling. Pavlov's work laid the foundation for many of psychologist John B. Watson's ideas. Watson and Pavlov shared both a disdain for "menatlistic" concepts (such as consciousness) and a belief that the basic laws of learning were the same for all animals whether dogs or humans
[4]
.
2) Operant conditioning where there is reinforcement of the behavior by a reward or a punishment. The theory of operant conditioning was developed by B.F. Skinner and is known as Radical Behaviorism. The word
‗operant‘ refers to the way in which behavior ‗operates on the environment‘. Briefly, a behavior may result either in reinforcement, which increases the likelihood of the behavior recurring, or punishment, which decreases the likelihood of the behavior recurring. It is important to note that, a punishment is not considered to be applicable if it does not result in the reduction of the behavior, and so the terms punishment and reinforcement are determined as a result of the actions. Within this framework, behaviorists are particularly interested in measurable changes in behavior. In operant conditioning we learn to assoicate a response (our behavior) and its consequence and thus to repeat acts followed by good results and avoid acts followed by bad results.
[5]
.
Since behaviorists view the learning process as a change in behavior, educators arrange the environment to elicit desired responses through such devices as behavioral objectives, competency -based education, and skill [2]
development and training.
Educational approaches such as applied behavior analysis, curriculum based measurement, and direct instruction have emerged from this model .
[6]
Cognitivism
Cognitive theories grew out of Gestalt psychology. Developed in Germany in the early 1900s, it was transplanted to America in the 1920s. Gestalt is roughly translated as "configuration," or "pattern," and emphasizes "the whole" of human experience
[7]
. Over the years, the Gestalt psychologist provided compelling
demonstrations and described principles by which we organize our sensations into perceptions challenge to the behaviorists came in a publication in 1929 by Bode, a gestalt psychologist.
[8] [9]
. The earliest
He criticized
behaviorists for being too dependent on overt behavior to explain learning. Gestalt psychologists proposed looking at the patterns rather than isolated events. Gestalt views of learning have been incorporated into what have come to be labeled cognitive theories. Two key assumptions underlie this cognitive approach: (1) that the memory system is an active organized processor of information and (2) that prior knowledge plays an important role in learning. Cognitive theories look beyond behavior to explain brain-based learning. Cognitivists consider how human memory works to promote learning. For example, the physiological processes of sorting and encoding information and events into short term memory and long term memory are important to educators working under the cognitive theory .
[10]
The major difference between gestaltists and
behaviorists is the locus of control over the learning activity: the individual learner is more key to gestaltists than the environment that behaviorists emphasize. Once
memory
memory model
[12]
theories
like
the Atkinson-Shiffrin
memory
model
[11]
and
Baddeley's working
were established as a theoretical framework in cognitive psychology, new cognitive
frameworks of learning began to emerge during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Today, researchers are concentrating on topics like cognitive load and information processing theory. These theories of learning play a role in [13]
influencing instructional design.
Aspects of cognitivism can be found in learning how to learn, social role
acquisition, intelligence, learning, and memory as related to age. Educators employing a cognitivist approach to learning would view learning as internal mental process (including insight, information processing, memory, perception) where in order to develop learner capacity and skills to improve learning, the educator structures content of learning activities to focus on building intelligence and cognitive and meta-cognitive development .
[2]
Constructivism
Constructivism is a revolution in educational psychology. Built on the work of Piaget and Bruner, constructivism emphasizes the importance of active involvement of learners in constructing knowledge for themselves...Constructivism emphasizes top-down processing: begin with complex problems and teach basic skills while solving these problems
[14]
. Constructivism explains why students do not learn deeply by listening
to a teacher, or reading from a textbook. Learning sciences research is revealing the deeper underlying bases of how knowledge construction works. To design effective environments, one needs a very good understanding of what children know when they come to the classroom. This requires sophisticated research into childrens cognitive development, and the learning sciences draws heavily on psychological studies of cognitive development (e.g., Siegler, 1998). The learning theories of John Dewey, Marie Montessori, and David Kolb serve as the foundation of constructivist learning theory .
[15]
Constructivism views learning as
a process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts based upon current and past knowledge or experience. In other words, "learning involves constructing one's own knowledge from one's own experiences." Constructivist learning, therefore, is a very personal endeavor, whereby internalized concepts, rules, and general principles may consequently be applied in a practical real-world context. Constructivism itself
has
many
variations,
such
as Active
learning, discovery
learning,
and knowledge building. Regardless of the variety, constructivism promotes a student's free exploration within a given framework or structure.
[16]
The teacher acts as a facilitator who encourages students to discover
principles for themselves and to construct knowledge by working to solve realistic problems. Aspects of constructivism can be found in self-directed learning, transformational learning, and experiential learning. Informal and Post-Modern Theories
Informal theories of education breaks down the learning process, learning authentically and with practicality. One theory deals with whether learning should take place as a building of concepts toward an overall idea, or the understanding of the overall idea with the details filled in later. In Marzano‘s restructuring knowledge the informal curriculum promotes the use of prior knowledge to help students gain big ideas and concept [17]
understanding.
This theory states that new knowledge cannot be told to students, rather student‘s current
knowledge must be challenged. By challenging student‘s current ideas, students can adjust their ideas to more closely resemble actual theories or concepts .
[17]
By using this method students gain the big idea taught and
later are more willing to learn and keep the specifics of the concept or theory taught. This theory further aligns with the studies of Brown and Ryoo, who support that teaching concepts and the language of a subject should [18]
be split into multiple steps.
Other informal learning concerns regard sources of motivation for learning. Deci argues that intrinsic motivation creates a more self-regulated learner
[19]
yet schools undermine intrinsic motivation. This is not
ideal for learning. Critics argue that average students learning in isolation perform significantly lower than those learning with collaboration and mediation . argumentation.
[20]
Students learn through talk, discussion, and
[21][22]
Transformative Learning Theory
Transformative learning theory [explains the] process of constructing and appropriating new and revised interpretations of the meaning of an experience in the world . process of effecting change in a frame of reference changes are often involved.
[25]
[24]
[23]
Transformative learning is the cognitive
although it is recognized that important emotional
These frames of reference define our view of the world and we have a tendency
as adults to reject or deem unworthy any ideas that do not ascribe to our particular values, associations, [24]
concepts, etc. [24]
view.
Our frames of reference are composed of two dimensions: habits of mind and points of
Habits of mind, such as ethnocentrism, are more fixed and influence our point of view and the
resulting thoughts or feelings associated with them, whereas points of view may change over time as a result [24]
of influences such as reflection, appropriation and feedback .
Transformative learners utilize discourse as a
means of critically examination and reflection ―devoted to assessing reasons presented in suppor t of competing interpretations, by critically examining evidence, arguments, and alternative points of [24]
view.‖
When circumstances permit, transformative learners move toward a frame of reference that is more
inclusive, discriminating, self-reflective, and integrative of experience .
[24]
Transformative learning leads to
autonomous and responsible thinking which is essential for full citizenship in democracy and for moral decision making in situations of rapid change .
[24]
Other Learning Theories
Educational Neuroscience or Neuroeducation is an emerging new learning theory. Prestigious universities such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, USC and others are now offering programs dedicated to neuroeducation and are developing majors and degrees in the field. It is founded on connecting what we know about how the brain processes and stores information with classroom instruction and experiences .
[26]
Neuroeducation analyzed the
biological change in the brain as new information is processed and looks at what environmental, emotional, social situations are best in order for the new information to be processed. It further analyzes under what conditions the brain stores information and links it to other neurons versus simply determining that the information is non-essential to store and hence reabsorbs the dendrite and dismisses the information. The 1990s were designated "The Decade of the Brain," and advances took place in neuroscience at an especially rapid pace. The three dominant methods for measuring brain activities are: ERP's, FMRI, MEG
[27]
.
Radin points out that the examination of the art and science of teaching was further accelerated by President G.H. Bush when he declared the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain. The integration and application of what we know about the brain was strengthened in 2000 when the American Federation of Teachers stated, It is vital that we identify what science tells us about how people learn in order to improve the education curriculum.
[28]
Rowland discusses that what is exciting about this new field in education is that modern brain
imaging techniques now make it possible, in some sense, to watch the brain as it learns. As academic language and learning (ALL) educators often work with students on improving their approaches to learning, the question then arises: can the results of neuro-scientific studies of brains as they are learning usefully inform practice in this area?
[29]
Although the field of neuroscience is young, it is expected that with new
technologies and ways of observing learning, the paradigms of what students need and how students learn best will be further refined with actual scientific evidence. In particular, students who may have learning disabilities will be taught with strategies that engage their brain and makes the connections needed. Other learning theories have also been developed for more specific purposes than general learning theories. For example, andragogy is the art and science to help adults learn. Connectivism is a recent theory of Networked learning which focuses on learning as making connections. Multimedia learning theory focuses on principles for the effective use of multimedia in learning. Criticism
Criticism of learning theories that underlie traditional educational practices claims there is no need for such a theory; that the attempt to comprehend the process of learning through theory construction creates more problems and inhibits personal freedom .
[30][31]
Education theory Educational theory can refer to either speculative educational thought in general or to a theory of education
as something that guides, explains, or describes educational practice. In terms of speculative thought, its history began with classical Greek philosophers and sophists, and today it is
a
term
for
reflective
theorizing
education policy, organization and leadership.
about pedagogy, andragogy, curriculum, learning,
Educational
thought
is
informed
by
various
and strands
of history, philosophy, sociology, critical theory, and psychology, among other disciplines. On the other hand, a theory of education can be " normative (or prescriptive) as in philosophy, [1]
or descriptive as in science."
In the first case, a theory means a postulation about what ought to be. It
provides the "goals, norms, and standards for conducting the process of education."
[2]
In the second case, it
means "an hypothesis or set of hypotheses that have been verified by observation and experiment."
[1]
Whereas
a normative educational theory provided by a philosopher might offer goals of education, descriptive "theory provides concrete data that will help realize more effectively the goals suggested by the philosopher. "
[1]
A
descriptive theory of education is a conceptual scheme that ties together various "otherwise discrete particulars. . .For example, a cultural theory of education shows how the concept of culture can be used to [3]
organize and unify the variety of facts about how and what people learn. " Likewise, for example, there is the behaviorist theory of education that comes from educational psychology and the functionalist theory of [4]
education that comes from sociology of education.
In general, there are currently three main ways in which the term "theory" is used in education:
the obverse of practice--theorizing is thinking and reflecting as opposed to doing;
a generalizing or explanatory model of some kind, e.g., a specific learning theory like constructivism;
a body of knowledge--these may or may not be associated with particular explanatory models. To theorize is [5]
to develop these bodies of knowledge . Educational thought
Educational thought is not necessarily concerned with the construction of theories as much as it is the "reflective examination of educational issues and problems from the perspective of diverse disciplines. "
[6]
Normative Theories of Education
Normative theories of education provide the norms, goals, and standards of education .
[7]
Educational philosophies
"Normative philosophies or theories of education may make use of the results of [philosophical thought] and of factual inquiries about human beings and the psychology of learning, but in any case they propound views about what education should be, what dispositions it should cultivate, why it ought to cultivate them, how and in whom it should do so, and what forms it should take. In a full-fledged philosophical normative theory of education, besides analysis of the sorts described, there will normally be propositions of the following kinds: 1. Basic normative premises about what is good or right; 2. Basic factual premises about humanity and the world; 3. Conclusions, based on these two kinds of premises, about the dispositions education should foster;
4. Further factual premises about such things as the psychology of learning and methods of teaching; and 5. Further conclusions about such things as the methods that education should use. " Examples of the purpose of schools include :
[9]
[8]
develop reasoning about perennial questions, master the
methods of scientific inquiry, cultivate the intellect, create change agents, develop spirituality, and model a democratic society Common educational philosophies include: educational perennialism, educational progressivism, educational essentialism, critical pedagogy, Montessori education, Waldorf education, and democratic education. Curriculum theory
Normative theories of curriculum aim to "describe, or set norms, for conditions surrounding many of the [10]
concepts and constructs" that define curriculum.
These normative propositions are different than the ones
above in that normative curriculum theory is not necessarily untestable .
[11]
A central question asked by
normative curriculum theory is: given a particular educational philosophy, what is worth knowing and why? Some examples are: a deep understanding of the Great Books, direct experiences driven by student interest, a superficial understanding of a wide range knowledge (e.g., Core knowledge), social and community problems and issues, knowledge and understanding specific to cultures and their achievements (e.g., African-Centered Education) Descriptive Theories of Education
Descriptive theories of education provide descriptions or explanations of the processes of education. Curriculum theory
Descriptive theories of curriculum explain how curricula "benefit or harm all publics it touches" .
[12][13]
One
descriptive concept from curriculum theory is that of the hidden curriculum, which is ―some of the outcomes or by-products of schools or of non-school settings, particularly those states which are learned but not openly [14]
intended.‖
Instructional theory
Instructional theories focus on the methods of instruction for teaching curricula. Theories include the methods of: autonomous
learning, coyote
teaching, inquiry-based
instruction, lecture, maturationism, socratic
method, outcome-based education, taking children seriously, transformative learning Philosophical Anthropology
Philosophical anthropology is the philosophical study of human nature. In terms of learning, examples of descriptive theories of the learner are: a mind, soul, and spirit capable of emulating the Absolute Mind (Idealism); an orderly, sensing, and rational being capable of understanding the world of things (Realism), a rational being with a soul modeled after God and who comes to know God through reason and revelation (Neo-Thomism), an evolving and active being capable of interacting with the environment (Pragmatism), a fundamentally free and individual being who is capable of being authentic through the making of and taking responsibility for choices include Bildung and paideia. Educational Psychology
[15]
(Existentialism).
Philosophical concepts for the process of education
Educational psychology is an empirical science that provides descriptive theories of how people learn. Examples
of
theories
of
education
in
psychology
are: constructivism, behaviorism, cognitivism,
and motivational theory Sociology of Education
The sociology
of
education is
the
study
of
how
public institutions and
individual
experiences
affect education and its outcomes. It is most concerned with the public schooling systems of modern industrial [16]
societies, including the expansion of higher, further, adult, and continuing education.
Examples of theories
of education from sociology include: functionalism, conflict theory, social efficiency, andsocial mobility. Educational anthropology
Educational anthropology is a sub-field of anthropology and is widely associated with the pioneering work of George Spindler. As the name would suggest, the focus of educational anthropology is obviously on education, although an anthropological approach to education tends to focus on the cultural aspects of education, including informal as well as formal education. As education involves understandings of who we are, it is not surprising that the single most recognized dictum of educational anthropology is that the field is centrally concerned with cultural transmission .
[17]
. Cultural transmission involves the transfer of a sense of
identity between generations, sometimes known as enculturation cultures, sometimes known as acculturation.
[19]
[18]
and also transfer of identity between
Accordingly thus it is also not surprising that educational
anthropology has become increasingly focussed on ethnic identity and ethnic change .
[20][21]
.
Educational Perennialism
Perennialists believe that one should teach the things that one deems to be of everlasting pertinence to all people everywhere. They believe that the most important topics develop a person. Since details of fact change constantly, these cannot be the most important. Therefore, one should teach principles, not facts. Since people are human, one should teach first about humans, not machines or techniques. Since people are people first, and workers second if at all, one should teach liberal topics first, not vocational topics. A particular strategy with modern perennialists is to teach scientific reasoning, not facts. They may illustrate the reasoning with original accounts of famous experiments. This gives the students a human side to the science, and shows the reasoning in action. Most importantly, it shows the uncertainty and false steps of real science. Although perennialism may appear similar to essentialism, perennialism focuses first on personal development, while essentialism focuses first on essential skills. Essentialist curricula thus tend to be much more vocational and fact-based, and far less liberal and principle-based. Both philosophies are typically considered to be teacher-centered, as opposed to student-centered philosophies of education such as progressivism. However, since the teachers associated with perennialism are in a sense the authors of the Western masterpieces themselves, these teachers may be open to student criticism through the associated Socratic method, which, if carried out as true dialogue, is a balance between students, including the teacher promoting the discussion. Secular perennialism The word perennial in secular perennialism suggests something that lasts an indefinitely long time, recurs again and again, or is self-renewing. As promoted primarily by Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, a universal curriculum based upon the common and essential nature of all human beings is recommended. This
form of perennialism comprises the humanist and scientific traditions. Hutchins and Adler implemented these ideas with great success at the University of Chicago, where they still strongly influence the curriculum in the form of the undergraduate Common Core. Other notable figures in the movement include Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan (who together initiated the Great Books program at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland), Mark Van Doren, Alexander Meiklejohn, and Sir Richard Livingstone, an English classicist with an American following. Secular perennialists espouse the idea that education should focus on the historical development of a continually developing common western base of human knowledge and art, the timeless value of classic thought on central human issues by landmark thinkers, and revolutionary ideas critical to historical western paradigm shifts or changes in world view. A program of studies which is highly general, nonspecialized, and nonvocational is advocated .
[1]
They firmly believe that exposure of all citizens to the
development of thought by those most responsible for the evolution of the Western tradition is integral to the survival of the freedoms, human rights and responsibilities inherent to a true Democracy. Adler states: ...our political democracy depends upon the reconstitution of our schools. Our schools are not turning out young people prepared for the high office and the duties of citizenship in a democratic republic. Our political institutions cannot thrive, they may not even survive, if we do not produce a greater number of thinking citizens, from whom some statesmen of the type we had in the 18th century might eventually emerge. We are, indeed, a nation at risk, and nothing but radical reform of our schools can save us from impending disaster... Whatever the price... the price we will pay for not doing it will be much greater .
[2]
Hutchins writes in the same vein: The business of saying... that people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the opposition of every extension of democracy. This opposition has always rested on the allegation that the people were incapable of exercising the power they demanded. Always the historic statement has been verified: you cannot expect the slave to show the virtues of the free man unless you first set him free. When the slave has been set free, he has, in the passage of time, become indistinguishable from those who have always been free... There appears to be an innate human tendency to underestimate the capacity of those who do not belong to "our" group. Those who do not share our background cannot have our ability. Foreigners, people who are in a different economic status, and the young seem invariably to be regarded as intellectually [3]
backward...
As with the essentialists, perennialists are educationally conservative in the requirement of a curriculum focused upon fundamental subject areas, but stress that the overall aim should be exposure to history's finest thinkers as models for discovery. The student should be taught such basic subjects as English, languages, history, mathematics, natural science, philosophy, and fine arts .
[4]
Adler states: "The three R's, which always [5]
signified the formal disciplines, are the essence of liberal or general education. "
Secular perennialists agree with progressivists that memorization of vast amounts of factual information and a focus on second-hand information in textbooks and lectures does not develop rational thought. They advocate learning through the development of meaningful conceptual thinking and judgement by means of a directed reading list of the profound, aesthetic, and meaningful great books of theWestern canon. These books, secular perennialists argue, are written by the world's finest thinkers, and cumulatively comprise the " Great Conversation" of mankind with regard to the central human questions. Their basic argument for the use of
original works (abridged translations being acceptable as well) is that these are the products of "genius". Hutchins remarks: Great books are great teachers; they are showing us every day what ordinary people are capable of. These books come out of ignorant, inquiring humanity. They are usually the first announcements for success in learning. Most of them were written for, and addressed to, ordinary people. "
[3]
It is important to note that the Great Conversation is not static, which is the impression that one might obtain from some descriptions of perennialism, a confusion with religious perennialism, or even the term perennialism itself. The Great Conversation and the set of related great books changes as the representative thought of man changes or progresses, and is therefore representative of an evolution of thought, but is not based upon the whim or fancy of the latest cultural fads. Hutchins makes this point very clear: In the course of history... new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superseded; and this process of change will continue as long as men can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation. ...the West needs to recapture and reemphasize and bring to bear upon its present problems the wisdom that lies in the works of its greatest thinkers and in the discussion that they have carried [3]
on.
Perennialism was a solution proposed in response to what was considered by many to be a failing educational system. Again Hutchins writes: The products of American high schools are illiterate; and a degree from a famous college or university is no guarantee that the graduate is in any better case. One of the most remarkable features of American society is that the difference between the "uneducated" and the "educated" is so slight .
[3]
In this regard John Dewey and Hutchins were in agreement. Hutchins's book The Higher Learning in America deplored the "plight of higher learning" that had turned away from cultivation of the intellect and
toward anti-intellectual practicality due in part, to a lust for money. In a highly negative review of the book, Dewey wrote a series of articles in The Social Frontier which began by applauding Hutchins' attack on "the aimlessness of our present educational scheme .
[6]
Perennialists believe that reading is to be supplemented with mutual investigations (between the teacher and the student) and minimally-directed discussions through the Socratic method in order to develop a historically oriented understanding of concepts. They argue that accurate, independent reasoning distinguishes the developed or educated mind and they thus stress the development of this faculty. A skilled teacher would keep discussions on topic and correct errors in reasoning, but it would be the class, not the teacher, who would reach the conclusions. While not directing or leading the class to a conclusion, the teacher may work to accurately formulate problems within the scope of the texts being studied. While the standard argument for utilizing a modern text supports distillation of information into a form relevant to modern society, perennialists argue that many of the historical debates and the development of ideas presented by the great books are relevant to any society, at any time, and thus that the suitability of the great books for instructional use is unaffected by their age. Perennialists freely acknowledge that any particular selection of great books will disagree on many topics; however, they see this as an advantage, rather than a detriment. They believe that the student must learn to recognize such disagreements, which often reflect current debates. The student becomes responsible for
thinking about the disagreements and reaching a reasoned, defensible conclusion. This is a major goal of the Socratic discussions. They do not advocate teaching a settled scholarly interpretation of the books, which would cheat the student of the opportunity to learn rational criticism and to know his own mind. Religious perennialism Perennialism was originally religious in nature, developed first by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century in his work De Magistro(The Teacher ). In the nineteenth century, John Henry Newman presented a detailed defense of educational perennialism in The Idea of a University. Discourse 5 of that work, "Knowledge Its Own End", is still relevant as a clear statement of a Christian educational perennialism. Metaphysics Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and [1]
the world,
although the term is not easily defined .
[2]
Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic
questions in the broadest possible terms: 1. "What is there?" [3]
2. "What is it like?"
[4]
[5]
A person who studies metaphysics is called a metaphysicist or a metaphysician.
The metaphysician
attempts to clarify the fundamental notions by which people understand the world, e.g. ,existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into the basic categories of being and how they relate to each other. Another central branch of metaphysics is cosmology, the study of the totality of all phenomena within the universe. Prior to the modern history of science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as natural philosophy. The term science itself meant "knowledge" of, originating from epistemology. The scientific method, however, transformed natural philosophy into an empirical activity deriving from experiment unlike the rest of philosophy. By the end of the 18th century, it had begun to be called "science" to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics denoted philosophical enquiry of a nonempirical character into the nature of existence .
[6]
Etymology The word "metaphysics" derives from the Greek words μετά ( metá) ("beyond", "upon" or "after") and υσικά [7]
(physiká) ("physics").
It was first used as the title for several of Aristotle's works, because they were usually
anthologized after the works on physics in complete editions. The prefix meta- ("beyond") indicates that these works come "after" the chapters on physics. However, Aristotle himself did not call the subject of these books "Metaphysics": he referred to it as "first philosophy." The editor of Aristotle's works ,Andronicus of Rhodes, is thought to have placed the books on first philosophy right after another work, Physics, and called them ηὰ μεηὰ ηὰ θσζικὰ βιβλία (ta meta ta physika biblia) or "the books that come after the [books on] physics". This was misread by Latinscholiasts, who thought it meant "the science of what is beyond the physical". However, once the name was given, the commentators sought to find intrinsic reasons for its appropriateness. For instance, it was understood to mean "the science of the world beyond nature ( phusis in Greek)," that is, the science of the immaterial. Again, it was understood to refer to the chronological or pedagogical order among our philosophical studies, so that the "metaphysical sciences would mean, those that we study after
having mastered the sciences that deal with the physical world" (St. Thomas Aquinas, "In Lib, Boeth. de Trin.", V, 1). There is a widespread use of the term in current popular literature, which replicates this error, i.e. that metaphysical means spiritual non-physical: thus, "metaphysical healing" means healing by means of remedies that are not physical.
[8]
Origins and nature of metaphysics Although the word "metaphysics" goes back to Aristotelean philosophy, Aristotle himself credited earlier philosophers with dealing with metaphysical questions. The first known philosopher, according to Aristotle, is Thales of Miletus, who taught that all things derive from a single first cause or Arche. Scientific questions in ancient Greece were addressed to metaphysicians, but by the 18th century, the skeptics' How do you know? led to a new branch of philosophy called epistemology (how we know) to fill-out the metaphysics ( what we know) and this led to science (Latin to know) and to the scientific method. Skepticism evolved epistemology out of metaphysics. Thereafter, metaphysics denoted philosophical inquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence .
[6]
Metaphysics as a discipline was a central part of academic inquiry and scholarly education even before the age of Aristotle, who considered it "the Queen of Sciences." Its issues were considered
[by whom?]
no less
important than the other main formal subjects o fphysical science, medicine, mathematics, poetics and music. Since the beginning of modern philosophy during the seventeenth century, problems that were not originally considered within the bounds of metaphysics have been added to its purview, while other problems considered metaphysical for centuries are now typically subjects of their own separate regions in philosophy, such as philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. In some cases, subjects of metaphysical scholarship have been found to be entirely physical and natural, thus making them part of science proper (cf. the theory of Relativity). Aristotle's branching
Aristotle's Metaphysics was divided into three parts, which are now regarded as the proper branches of traditional Western metaphysics: Ontology
The study of being and existence; includes the definition and classification of entities, physical or mental, the nature of their properties, and the nature of change. Natural Theology The study of a God or Gods; involves many topics, including among others the nature of religion and the world, existence of the divine, questions about Creation, and the numerous religious or spiritual issues that concern humankind in general. Universal science The study of first principles, such as the law of non contradiction, which Aristotle believed were the foundation of all other inquiries. Universal science or first philosophy treats of "being qua being" — that is, what is basic to all science before one adds the particular details of any one science. Essentially "being qua being" may be translated as "being
insofar as being goes" or as "being in terms of being." This includes topics such as causality, substance, species and elements, as well as the notions of relation, interaction, and finitude. Central questions Most positions that can be taken with regards to any of the following questions are endorsed by one or another notable philosopher. It is often difficult to frame the questions in a non-controversial manner. Being, existence and reality
The nature of Being is a perennial topic in metaphysics. For instance, Parmenides taught that reality was a single unchanging Being. The 20th century philosopher Heidegger thought previous philosophers have lost sight of the question of Being (qua Being) in favour of the questions of beings (existing things), so that a return to the Parmenidean approach was needed. An ontological catalogue is an attempt to list the fundamental constituents of reality. The question of whether or not existence is a predicate has been discussed since the Early Modern period, not least in relation to the ontological argument for the existence of God. Existence, that something is, has been contrasted with essence, the question of what something is. Reflections on
the
nature
of
the
connection
and
distinction
between
existence
and
essence
dates
back
to Aristotle‘s Metaphysics, and it found one of its later most influential interpretations in the ontology of the eleventh century metaphysician Avicenna (Ibn Sina).
[9]
Since existence without essence seems blank, it is
associated with nothingness by philosophers such as Hegel. Empirical and conceptual objects Objects and their properties
The world seems to contain many individual things, both physical, like apples, and abstract such as love and the number 3; the former objects are called particulars. Particulars are said to have attributes, e.g. size, shape, color, location and two particulars may have some such attributes in common. Such attributes, are also termed Universals or Properties; the nature of these, and whether they have any real existence and if so of what kind, is a long-standing issue, realism and nominalism representing opposing views. Metaphysicians concerned with questions about universals or particulars are interested in the nature of objects and their properties, and the relationship between the two. Some, e.g. Plato, argue that properties are abstract objects, existing outside of space and time, to which particular objects bear special relations. David Armstrong holds that universals exist in time and space but only at their instantiation and their discovery is a function of science. Others maintain that particulars are a bundle or collection of properties (specifically, a bundle of properties they have). Abstract objects and mathematics
Some philosophers endorse views according to which there are abstract objects such as numbers, or Universals. (Universals are properties that can be instantiated by multiple objects, such as redness or squareness.) Abstract objects are generally regarded as being outside of space and time, and/or as being causally inert. Mathematical objects and fictional entities and worlds are often given as examples of abstract objects. The view that there really are no abstract objects is called nominalism. Realism about such objects is exemplified by Platonism. Other positions include moderate realism, as espoused by Aristotle, and conceptualism. The philosophy of mathematics overlaps with metaphysics because some positions are realistic in the sense that they hold that mathematical objects really exist, whether transcendentally, physically, or mentally.
Platonic realism holds that mathematical entities are a transcendent realm of non-physical objects. The simplest form of mathematical empiricism claims that mathematical objects are just ordinary physical objects, i.e. that squares and the like physically exist. Plato rejected this view, among other reasons, because geometrical figures in mathematics have a perfection that no physical instantiation can capture. Modern mathematicians have developed many strange and complex mathematical structures with no counterparts in observable reality, further undermining this view. The third main form of realism holds that mathematical entities exist in the mind. However, given a materialistic conception of the mind, it does not have the capacity to literally contain the many infinities of objects in mathematics. Intuitionism, inspired by Kant, sticks with the idea that "there are no non-experienced mathematical truths". This involves rejecting as intuitionistically unacceptable anything that cannot be held in the mind or explicitly constructed. Intuitionists reject the law of the excluded middle and are suspicious of infinity, particularly of transfinite numbers. Other positions such as formalism and fictionalism that do not attribute any existence to mathematical entities are anti-realist. Cosmology and cosmogony Metaphysical Cosmology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the world as the totality of
all phenomena in space and time. Historically, it has had quite a broad scope, and in many cases was founded in religion. The ancient Greeks did not draw a distinction between this use and their model for the cosmos. However, in modern times it addresses questions about the Universe which are beyond the scope of the physical sciences. It is distinguished from religious cosmology in that it approaches these questions using philosophical methods (e.g. dialectics). Cosmogony deals specifically with the origin of the universe. Modern metaphysical cosmology and cosmogony try to address questions such as:
What
is
the
origin
of
the
Universe?
What
is
its
first
cause?
Is
its
existence
necessary?
the
Universe?
(see monism, pantheism, emanationism andcreationism)
What
are
the
ultimate
material
components
of
(see mechanism, dynamism, hylomorphism, atomism)
What is the ultimate reason for the existence of the Universe? Does the cosmos have a purpose? (see teleology) Determinism and free will
Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition, decision and action,
is causally determined
by
an
unbroken
chain
of
prior
occurrences.
It
holds
that
no random, spontaneous, stochastic, mysterious, or miraculous events occur. The principal consequence of the deterministic claim is that it poses a challenge to the existence of free will. The problem of free will is the problem of whether rational agents exercise control over their own actions and decisions. Addressing this problem requires understanding the relation between freedom and causation, and determining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic. Some philosophers, known as Incompatibilists, view determinism and free will as mutually exclusive. If they believe in determinism, they will therefore believe free will to be an illusion, a position known as Hard Determinism. Proponents range from Baruch Spinoza to Ted Honderich. Others, labeled Compatibilists (or "Soft Determinists"), believe that the two ideas can be coherently reconciled. Adherents of this view include Thomas Hobbes and many modern philosophers.
Incompatibilists who accept free will but reject determinism are called Libertarians, a term not to be confused with the political sense.Robert Kane is a modern defender of this theory. Identity and change
The Greeks took some extreme positions on the nature of change: Parmenides denied that change occurs at all, while Heraclitus thought change was ubiquitous: "[Y]ou cannot step into the same river twice". Identity, sometimes called Numerical Identity, is the relation that a "thing" bears to itself, and which no "thing" bears to anything other than itself (cf. sameness). According to Leibniz, if some object x is identical to some object y, then any property that x has, y will have as well. However, it seems, too, that objects can change over time. If one were to look at a tree one day, and the tree later lost a leaf, it would seem that one could still be looking at that same tree. Two rival theories to account for the relationship between change and identity are Perdurantism, which treats the tree as a series of tree-stages, and Endurantism, which maintains that the tree — the same tree — is present at every stage in its history. Mind and matter
The nature of matter was a problem in its own right in early philosophy. Aristotle himself introduced the idea of matter in general to the Western world, adapting the term hyle, which originally meant "lumber." Early debates centered on identifying a single underlying principle. Water was claimed by Thales, air by Anaximenes, Apeiron (the Boundless) by Anaximander, fire by Heraclitus. Democritus, in conjunction with his mentor, Leucippus, conceived of an atomic theory many centuries before it was accepted by modern science. It is worth noting, however, that the grounds necessary to ensure validity to the proposed theory's veridical nature were not scientific, but just as philosophical as those traditions espoused by Thales and Anaximander. The nature of the mind and its relation to the body has been seen as more of a problem as science has progressed in its mechanistic understanding of the brain and body. Proposed solutions often have ramifications about the nature of mind as a whole. René Descartesproposed substance dualism, a theory in which mind and body are essentially different, with the mind having some of the attributes traditionally assigned to the soul, in the seventeenth century. This creates a conceptual puzzle about how the two interact (which has received some strange answers, such as occasionalism) . Evidence of a close relationship between brain and mind, such as the Phineas Gage case, have made this form of dualism increasingly unpopular. Another proposal discussing the mind-body problem is idealism, in which the material is sweepingly eliminated in favor of the mental. Idealists, such as George Berkeley, claim that material objects do not exist unless
perceived
and
only
as
perceptions.
The
"German
idealists"
such
as Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer took Kant as their starting-point, although it is debatable how much of an idealist Kant himself was. Idealism is also a common theme in Eastern philosophy. Related ideas are panpsychism and panexperientialism, which say everything has a mind rather than everything exists in a mind. Alfred North Whitehead was a twentieth-century exponent of this approach. Idealism is a monistic theory which holds that there is a single universal substance or principle. Neutral monism, associated in different forms with Baruch Spinoza and Bertrand Russell, seeks to be less extreme than idealism, and to avoid the problems of substance dualism. It claims that existence consists of a single substance that in itself is neither mental nor physical, but is capable of mental and physical aspects or attributes – thus it implies a dual-aspect theory.
For the last one hundred years, the dominant metaphysics has without a doubt been materialistic monism. Type identity
theory,
tokenidentity
physicalism, eliminative
theory, functionalism, reductive
physicalism, nonreductive
materialism, anomalous
monism, property
dualism, epiphenomenalism and emergence are just some of the candidates for a scientifically informed account of the mind. (It should be noted that while many of these positions are dualisms, none of them are substance dualism.) Prominent
recent
philosophers
Chalmers, Patricia and Paul
of
mind
Churchland, Donald
include David
Davidson, Daniel
Armstrong, Ned Dennett, Douglas
Block, David Hofstadter, Jerry
Fodor, David Lewis, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, John Smart,Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Fred Alan Wolf. Necessity and possibility
Metaphysicians investigate questions about the ways the world could have been. David Lewis, in "On the Plurality of Worlds," endorsed a view called Concrete Modal realism, according to which facts about how things could have been are made true by other concrete worlds, just like ours, in which things are different. Other philosophers, such as Gottfried Leibniz, have dealt with the idea of possible worlds as well. The idea of necessity is that any necessary fact is true across all possible worlds; that is, we could not imagine it to be otherwise. A possible fact is true in some possible world, even if not in the actual world. For example, it is possible that cats could have had two tails, or that any particular apple could have not existed. By contrast, certain propositions seem necessarily true, such as analytic propositions, e.g. "All bachelors are unmarried." The particular example of analytic truth being necessary is not universally held among philosophers. A less controversial view might be that self-identity is necessary, as it seems fundamentally incoherent to claim that for any x, it is not identical to itself; this is known as the law of identity, a putative "first principle". Aristotle describes the principle of non-contradiction, "It is impossible that the same quality should both belong and not belong to the same thing . . . This is the most certain of all principles . . . Wherefore they who demonstrate refer to this as an ultimate opinion. For it is by nature the source of all the other axioms." Religion and spirituality
Theology is the study of a god or gods and the nature of the divine. Whether there is a god (monotheism), many gods (polytheism) or no gods (atheism), or whether it is unknown or unknowable whether any gods exist (agnosticism), and whether the Divine intervenes directly in the world (theism), or its sole function is to be the first cause of the universe (deism); these and whether a God or gods and the World are different (as in panentheism and dualism), or are identical (as in pantheism), are some of the primary metaphysical questions concerning philosophy of religion. Within the standard Western philosophical tradition, theology reached its peak under the medieval school of thought known as scholasticism, which focused primarily on the metaphysical aspects of Christianity. The work of the scholastics is still an integral part of modern philosophy,
[citation needed ]
with key figures such
[10]
as Thomas Aquinas still playing an important role in the philosophy of religion. Space and time
In Book XI of the Confessions, Saint Augustine of Hippo asked the fundamental question about the nature of time. A traditional realistposition in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. Idealists, including Kant, claim that space and time are mental constructs used to organize perceptions, or are otherwise surreal.
Suppose that one is sitting at a table, with an apple in front of him or her; the apple exists in space and in time, but what does this statement indicate? Could it be said, for example, that space is like an invisible threedimensional grid in which the apple is positioned? Suppose the apple, and all physical objects in the universe, were
removed
from
existence
entirely.
Would
space
as
an
"invisible
grid"
still
exist? René
Descartes and Leibniz believed it would not, arguing that without physical objects, "space" would be meaningless because space is the framework upon which we understand how physical objects are related to each other. Newton, on the other hand, argued for an absolute "container" space. The pendulum swung back to relational space with Einstein and Ernst Mach. While the absolute/relative debate, and the realism debate are equally applicable to time and space, time presents some special problems of its own. The flow of time has been denied in ancient times by Parmenides and more recently by J. M. E. McTaggart in his paper The Unreality of Time. The direction of time, also known as "time's arrow", is also a puzzle, although physics is now driving the debate rather than philosophy. It appears that fundamental laws are time-reversible and the arrow of time must be an "emergent" phenomenon, perhaps explained by a statistical understanding of thermodynamic entropy. Common-sense tells us that objects persist across time, that there is some sense in which you are the same person you were yesterday, in which the oak is the same as the acorn, in which you perhaps even can step into the same river twice. Philosophers have developed two rival theories for how this happens, called "endurantism" and "perdurantism ". Broadly speaking, endurantists hold that a whole object exists at each moment of its history, and the same object exists at each moment. Perdurantists believe that objects are fourdimensional entities made up of a series of temporal parts like the frames of a movie. Styles and methods of metaphysics
Rational versus empirical. Rationalism is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not
sensory but intellectual and deductive" (Bourke 263). Rationalist metaphysicians aim to deduce the nature of reality by armchair, a priori reasoning.Empiricism holds that the senses are the primary source of knowledge about the world.
Analytical versus systemic . The "system building" style of metaphysics attempts to answer all the important
questions in a comprehensive and coherent way, providing a theory of everything or complete picture of the world. The contrasting approach is to deal with problems piecemeal.
Dogmatic versus critical. Under the scholastic approach of the Middle Ages, a number of themes and ideas
were not open to be challenged. Kant and others thought this "dogmatism" should be replaced by a critical approach.
Individual versus collective.
Scholasticism
and Analytical
philosophy are
examples
of
collaborative
approaches to philosophy. Many other philosophers expounded individual visions.
Parsimonious versus Adequate. Should a metaphysical system posit as little as possible, or as much as
needed?
Descriptive versus revisionary. Peter Strawson makes the distinction between descriptive metaphysics,
which sets out to investigate our deepest assumptions, and revisionary metaphysics, which sets out to improve or rectify them.
[11]
History and schools of metaphysics Pre-Socratic metaphysics in Greece
The first known philosopher, according to Aristotle, is Thales of Miletus. Rejecting mythological and divine explanations, he sought for a single first cause or Arche (origin or beginning) under which all phenomena could be explained, and concluded that this first cause was in fact moisture or water. Thales also taught that the world is harmonious, has a harmonious structure, and thus is intelligible to rational understanding. Other Miletians, such as Anaximander and Anaximenes, also had a monistic conception of the first cause. Another school was the Eleatics, Italy. The group was founded in the early fifth century BCE by Parmenides, and included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Methodologically, the Eleatics were broadly rationalist, rejecting the epistemological validity of sense experience, and instead took logical standards of clarity and necessity to be the criteria of truth. Parmenides' chief doctrine was that reality is a single unchanging and universal Being. Zeno used reductio ad absurdum, to demonstrate the illusory nature of change and time in his paradoxes. Heraclitus of Ephesus, in contrast, made change central, teaching that "all things flow". His philosophy, expressed in brief aphorisms, is quite cryptic. For instance, he also taught the unity of opposites. Democritus and his teacher Leucippus, are known for formulating an atomic theory for the cosmos.
[12]
They
are considered forerunners of the scientific method. Socrates and Plato
Socrates is known for his dialectic or questioning approach to philosophy rather than a positive metaphysical doctrine. His pupil, Plato is famous for his theory of forms (which he confusingly places in the mouth of Socrates in the dialogues he wrote to expound it) .Platonic realism (also considered a form of idealism
[13]
) is
considered to be a solution to the problem of universals; i.e, what particular objects have in common is that they share a specific Form which is universal to all others of their respective kind. The theory has a number of other aspects:
Epistemological: knowledge of the Forms is more certain than mere sensory data.
Ethical: The Form of the Good sets an objective standard for morality.
Time and Change: The world of the Forms is eternal and unchanging. Time and change belong only to the lower sensory world. "Time is a moving image of Eternity".
Abstract objects and mathematics: Numbers, geometrical figures, etc., exist mind-independently in the World of Forms. Platonism developed into Neoplatonism, a philosophy with a monotheistic and mystical flavour that survived well into the early Christian era. Aristotle
Plato's pupil Aristotle wrote widely on almost every subject, including metaphysics. His solution to the problem of universals contrasts with Plato's. Whereas Platonic Forms exist in a separate realm, and can exist uninstantiated in visible things, Aristotelean essences "indwell" in particulars. Potentiality and Actuality
[14]
are principles of a dichotomy which Aristotle used throughout his philosophical
works to analyze motion, casuality and other issues. The Aristotelean theory of change and causality stretches to four causes: the material, formal, efficient and final. The efficient cause corresponds to what is now known as a cause simpliciter . Final causes are
explicitly teleological, a concept now regarded as controversial in science. The Matter/Form dichotomy was to become highly influential in later philosophy as the substance/essence distinction. Scholasticism and the Middle Ages
Between about 1100 and 1500, philosophy as a discipline took place as part of the Catholic church's teaching system, known as scholasticism. Scholastic philosophy took place within an established framework blending Christian theology with Aristotelean teachings. Although fundamental orthodoxies could not be challenged, there were nonetheless deep metaphysical disagreements, particularly over the problem of universals, which engaged Duns Scotus and Pierre Abelard. William of Ockham is remembered for his principle of ontological parsimony. Continental rationalism
In the early modern period (17th and 18th centuries), the system-building scope of philosophy is often linked to the rationalist method of philosophy, that is the technique of deducing the nature of the world by pure reason. The scholastic concepts of substance and accident were employed.
Leibniz proposed in his Monadology a plurality of non-interacting substances.
Descartes is famous for his Dualism of material and mental substances.
Spinoza believed reality was a single substance of God-or-nature. British empiricism
British empiricism marked something of a reaction to rationalist and system-building philosophy, or speculative metaphysics as it was pejoratively termed. The sceptic David Hume famously declared that most metaphysics should be consigned to the flames (see below). Hume was notorious among his contemporaries as one of the first philosophers to openly doubt religion, but is better known now for his critique of causality. John Stuart Mill, Thomas Reid and John Locke were less sceptical, embracing a more cautious style of metaphysics based on realism, common sense and science. Other philosophers, notably George Berkely were led from empiricism to idealistic metaphysics. Kant
Immanuel Kant attempted a grand synthesis and revision of the trends already mentioned: scholastic philosophy, systematic metaphysics, and sceptical empiricism, not to forget the burgeoning science of his day. Like the systems builders, he had an overarching framework in which all questions were to be addressed. Like Hume, who famously woke him from his 'dogmatic slumbers', he was suspicious of metaphysical speculation, and also places much emphasis on the limitations of the human mind. Kant saw rationalist philosophers as aiming for a kind of metaphysical knowledge he defined as the synthetic apriori — that is knowledge that does not come from the senses (it is a apriori) but is nonetheless about
reality (synthetic). Inasmuch as it is about reality, it is unlike abstract mathematical propositions (which he terms analytical apriori), and being apriori it is distinct from empirical, scientific knowledge (which he terms synthetic aposteriori). The only synthetic apriori knowledge we can have is of how our minds organise the data of the senses; that organising framework is space and time, which for Kant have no mind-independent existence, but nonetheless operate uniformly in all humans. Apriori knowledge of space and time is all that remains of metaphysics as traditionally conceived. There is a reality beyond sensory data or phenomena, which he calls the realm of noumena; however, we cannot know it as it is in itself, but only as it appears to us. He allows himself to speculate that the origins of God, morality, and free will might exist in the noumenal
realm, but these possibilities have to be set against its basic unknowability for humans. Although he saw himself as having disposed of metaphysics, in a sense, he has generally been regarded in retrospect, as having a metaphysics of his own. 19th
Century
philosophy
was
overwhelmingly
influenced
by
Kant
and
his
successors. Schopenhauer, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel all purveyed their own panoramic versions of German Idealism, Kant's own caution about metaphysical speculation, and refutation of idealism, having fallen by the wayside. The idealistic impulse continued into the early 20th century with British idealists such as F. H. Bradley and J. M. E. McTaggart. Followers of Karl Marx took Hegel's dialectic view of history and re-fashioned it as materialism. Early analytical philosophy and positivism
During the period when idealism was dominant in philosophy, science had been making great advances. The arrival of a new generation of scientifically minded philosophers led to a sharp decline in the popularity of idealism during the 1920s. Analytical philosophy was spearheaded by Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore. Russell and William James tried to compromise between idealism and materialism with the theory of neutral monism. The early to mid 20th century philosophy also saw a trend to reject metaphysical questions as meaningless. The driving force behind this tendency was the unabashedly materialist philosophy of Logical Positivism as espoused by the Vienna Circle. See "The Value and Future of Metaphysics" below. At around the same time, the American pragmatists were steering a middle course between materialism and idealism. System-building metaphysics, with a fresh inspiration from science, was revived by A. N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Continental philosophy
The forces that shaped analytical philosophy — the break with idealism, and the influence of science — were much less significant outside the English speaking world, although there was a shared turn toward language. Continental philosophy continued in a trajectory from post Kantianism. The phenomenology of Husserl and others was intended as a collaborative project for the investigation of the features and structure of consciousness common to all humans, in line with Kant's basing his synthetic apriori on the uniform operation of consciousness. It was officially neutral with regards to ontology, but was nonetheless to spawn a number of metaphysical systems. Brentano's concept ofintentionality would become widely influential, including on analytical philosophy. Heidegger, author of Being and Time, saw himself as re-focusing on Being-qua-being, introducing the novel concept of Dasein in the process. Classing himself an existentialist, Sartre wrote an extensive study of " Being and Nothingness . The speculative realism movement marks a return to full blooded realism. Later analytical philosophy
While early analytic philosophy tended to reject metaphysical theorizing, under the influence of logical positivism, it was revived in the second half of the twentieth century. Philosophers such as David Kellogg Lewis and David Armstrong developed elaborate theories on a range of topics such as universals, causation,
possibility and necessity and abstract objects. However, the focus of analytical philosophy is generally away from the construction of all-encompassing systems and towards close analysis of individual ideas. Among the developments that led to the revival of metaphysical theorizing were Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction, which was generally taken to undermine Carnap's distinction between existence questions internal to a framework and those external to it .
[15]
The philosophy of fiction, the problem of empty names, and the debate over existence's status as a property have all risen out of relative obscurity to become central concerns, while perennial issues such as free will, [16][17]
possible worlds, and the philosophy of time have had new life breathed into them . The value and future of metaphysics
A number of individuals have suggested that metaphysics as a whole should be rejected. David Hume argued with his empiricist principle that all knowledge involves either relations of ideas or matters of fact: If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but
sophistry and illusion. — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding However, Hume's assertion may be self-defeating if it itself is not self-evident or empirically verifiable .
[18]
Immanuel Kant prescribed a limited role to the subject and argued against knowledge progressing beyond the world of our representations, except to knowledge that the noumena exist: ...though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears. — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason pp. Bxxvi-xxvii Proceeding from Kant's statement about antinomy, A.J. Ayer in Language,
Truth
and
Logic using
the verifiability theory of meaningc oncluded that metaphysical propositions were neither true nor false but strictly meaningless, as were religious views. However, Karl Popper argued that metaphysical statements are [19]
not meaningless statements, but rather not fallible, testable or provablestatements
i.e. neither empirical
observations nor logical arguments could falsify metaphysical statements to show them to be true or false. Hence, a metaphysical statement usually implies an idea about the world or about the universe, which may be reasonable but is ultimately not empirically testable. Rudolf Carnap, in his book Philosophy and Logical Syntax, used the concept of verifiability to reject metaphysics. Metaphysicians cannot avoid making their statements nonverifiable, because if they made them verifiable, the decision about the truth or falsehood of their doctrines would depend upon experience and therefore belong to the region of empirical science. This consequence they wish to avoid, because they pretend to teach knowledge which is of a higher level than that of empirical science. Thus they are compelled to cut all connection between their statements and experience; and precisely by this procedure they deprive them of any sense. — Rudolf Carnap
