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25The existential concern of the humanities R.S. Peters’ justification of liberal educationEducational Philosophy and Theory 50 (6): 702-711. 2018.Richard Stanley Peters was one of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy of education in the twentieth century. After reviewing Peters’ disentanglement of the ambiguities of liberal education, I reconstruct his view on the status and the existential foundations of the humanities. What emerges from my reconstruction is an original justificatory argument for the value of liberal education as general education in the sense of initiation into the heritage of the humanities. To close, I evaluate…Read more
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27A Correction to Dillard’s Reading of Geach’s Temporality Argument for Non-MaterialismAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 97 (1): 69-73. 2023.In his article “What Do We Think With?” Peter Geach develops an argument for the non-materiality of thinking. Given that basic thinking activity is not clockable in physical time, whereas basic material or bodily activity is so clockable, it follows that basic thinking activity is non-material. Peter Dillard’s attack on this temporality proof takes “thoughts” in the proof to refer to non-occurrent states. The present note shows this reading to be mistaken and so rectifies a misunderstanding of G…Read more
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81Determinism and the Paradox of PredictabilityErkenntnis 72 (2): 233-249. 2010.The inference from determinism to predictability, though intuitively plausible, needs to be qualified in an important respect. We need to distinguish between two different kinds of predictability. On the one hand, determinism implies external predictability , that is, the possibility for an external observer, not part of the universe, to predict, in principle, all future states of the universe. Yet, on the other hand, embedded predictability as the possibility for an embedded subsystem in the un…Read more
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36Introduction: Beyond empiricism in the social explanation of actionPhilosophical Explorations 7 (3). 2004.This Article does not have an abstract
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87Moral responsibility and the problem of manipulation reconsideredInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (4). 2004.It has been argued that all compatibilist accounts of free action and moral responsibility succumb to the manipulation problem: evil neurologists or their like may manipulate an agent, in the absence of the agent's awareness of being so manipulated, so that when the agent performs an action, requirements of the compatibilist contender at issue are satisfied. But intuitively, the agent is not responsible for the action. We propose that the manipulation problem be construed as a problem of devianc…Read more
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305Dance as Portrayed in the MediaThe Journal of Aesthetic Education 47 (3): 72-95. 2013.This article attempts to answer a question that many dancers and non-dancers may have. What is dance according to the media? Furthermore, how does the written word portray dance in the media? To answer these ques-tions, this research focuses on the role that the discourse of dance in media plays in the public sphere’s knowledge construction of dance. This is impor-tant to study because the public sphere’s meaning of dance will determine whether dance education is promoted or banned in schools an…Read more
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66Ultimate Educational Aims, Overridingness, and Personal Well-beingStudies in Philosophy and Education 30 (6): 543-556. 2011.Discussion regarding education’s aims, especially its ultimate aims, is a key topic in the philosophy of education. These aims or values play a pivotal role in regulating and structuring moral and other types of normative education. We outline two plausible strategies to identify and justify education’s ultimate aims. The first associates these aims with a normative standpoint, such as the moral, prudential, or aesthetic, which is overriding, in a sense of ‘overriding’ to be explained. The secon…Read more
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John Martin Fischer, My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility (review)Ethical Perspectives 14 (1): 104-108. 2007.
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65Magical agents, global induction, and the internalism/externalism debateAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (3). 2007.Externalism is the view that facts about one's history or past in the external world that bear on the acquisition of one's responsibility-grounding psychological elements are pertinent to whether one's actions are free and, hence, pertinent to whether one can be morally responsible for them. Internalism is the thesis that the conditions of moral responsibility can be specified independently of facts about how the person acquired her responsibility-grounding psychological elements. In this paper …Read more
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40Authenticity-Sensitive Preferentism and Educating for Well-Being and AutonomyJournal of Philosophy of Education 42 (1): 85-106. 2008.An overarching aim of education is the promotion of children’s personal well-being. Liberal educationalists also support the promotion of children’s personal autonomy as a central educational aim. On some views, such as John White’s, these two goals—furthering well-being and cultivating autonomy—can come apart. Our primary aim in this paper is to argue for a species of a stronger view: assuming preferentism as our axiology, we suggest that there is an essential association between the autonomy o…Read more
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117The trouble with externalist compatibilist autonomyPhilosophical Studies 129 (2): 171-196. 2006.In this paper, I try to show that externalist compatibilism in the debate on personal autonomy and manipulated freedom is as yet untenable. I will argue that Alfred R. Mele’s paradigmatic, history-sensitive externalism about psychological autonomy in general and autonomous deliberation in particular faces an insurmountable problem: it cannot satisfy the crucial condition of adequacy “H” for externalist theories that I formulate in the text. Specifically, I will argue that, contrary to first appe…Read more
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91The trouble with Harry: Compatibilist free will internalism and manipulationJournal of Philosophical Research 29 (February): 235-254. 2004.
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21Stoffige geesten: Over het materialismeTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 56 (4). 1994.Is the idea of a material mind intelligible? Or, to put it another way, is the hypothesis that the mind is the brain believable? This paper, firstly, claims that the materialistic project in contemporary philosophy of mind can only be accepted if both the general outlook of scientism and a specific scientific methodology to address the mind-body problem are taken for granted. The basic question — how are intentionality and consciousness possible, given mechanistic physicalism? — has a prima faci…Read more
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27Fricker on testimonial justificationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40 (1): 36-44. 2009.Elizabeth Fricker has recently proposed a principle aimed at stating the necessary and sufficient conditions for testimonial justification. Her proposal entails that a hearer is justified in believing a speaker’s testimony only if she recognizes the speaker to be trustworthy, which, given Fricker’s internalist commitments, requires the hearer to have within her epistemic purview grounds which justify belief in the speaker’s trustworthiness. We argue that, as it stands, Fricker’s principle is too…Read more
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The analytic perspective on persons and their identity+ Response to reviews by M. Meijsing and P. Van HauteTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 59 (2): 338-343. 1997.
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Reading R. S. Peters Today: Analysis, Ethics, and the Aims of Education (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2011._Reading R. S. Peters Today: Analysis, Ethics and the Aims of Education_ reassesses British philosopher Richard Stanley Peters’ educational writings by examining them against the most recent developments in philosophy and practice. Critically reassesses R. S. Peters, a philosopher who had a profound influence on a generation of educationalists Brings clarity to a number of key educational questions Exposes mainstream, orthodox arguments to sympathetic critical scrutiny
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45Philosophical Atomism and the Metaphysics of Personal IdentityInternational Philosophical Quarterly 38 (4): 349-368. 1998.There is something deeply wrong with the debate on personal identity in contemporary analytical philosophy. This paper offers an overall view in terms of which this debate can be diagnosed and offered a therapy. In the diagnostic sections, the bundle and ego-theory are described as forms of the selfsame philosophical atomism, and the untenability of one strand in this still highly influential habit of thought is demonstrated. In the therapeutic section, the author exposes in what way Peter Straw…Read more
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60Reading R. S. Peters on Education TodayJournal of Philosophy of Education 43 (s1): 3-7. 2009.This introduction to this special issue offers an overview of R. S. Peters' seminal role in the development of modern philosophy of education, acknowledging the originality and range of his work, and indicating his continuing importance to the field. It explains the structure and organisation of the collection and provides a rationale for this body of work as a rereading of Peters in the light of current concerns
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14Kants schizofrene compatibilismeAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 103 (3): 201-205. 2011.
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6“Plowden” at 50—R.S. Peters’ Response to Educational ProgressivismIn Stefan Ramaekers & Naomi Hodgson (eds.), Past, Present, and Future Possibilities for Philosophy and History of Education: Finding Space and Time for Research, Springer Verlag. pp. 101-116. 2018.In this chapter, I reconstruct the basic structure of Peters’ analytic response to educational progressivism as politically expressed in the 1967 Plowden Report. The report expressed a particular line of thought in educational theory, namely that of educational progressivism or child-centred education. In the 1960s, Peters introduced the analytic paradigm into the philosophy of education in Great Britain. In the socio-economic context of the 1960s, this new paradigm had some institutional as wel…Read more
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Jack JC Smart and John J. Haldane, Atheism and TheismInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 5 479-482. 1997.
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30Robust activity, event-causation, and agent-causationIn J. A. M. Bransen & S. E. Cuypers (eds.), Human Action, Deliberation and Causation, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 271--294. 1998.
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7Onpersoonlijke persoonsidentiteit. Over de fictie van het Ikde Uil Van Minerva 9 (1): 33-48. 1992.
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98Education for Critical Thinking: Can it be non‐indoctrinative?Educational Philosophy and Theory 38 (6). 2006.An ideal of education is to ensure that our children develop into autonomous critical thinkers. The ‘indoctrination objection’, however, calls into question whether education, aimed at cultivating autonomous critical thinkers, is possible. The core of the concern is that since the young child lacks even modest capacities for assessing reasons, the constituent components of critical thinking have to be indoctrinated if there is to be any hope of the child's attaining the ideal. Our primary object…Read more
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Het probleem van vrijheid en determinismeAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 4. 2005.
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8Guest Editorial: Harry FrankfurtEthical Perspectives 5 (1): 1-2. 1998.Harry Frankfurt is one of the leading contemporary analytical philosophers. His research interests are mainly free will and moral responsibility, as well as moral psychology and ethics in general. He is the author of Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen: The Defense of Reason in Descartes’s Meditations — published in 1970 with a French translation in 1989 — and numerous scholarly articles on Descartes’s philosophy. He is the editor of Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays which appeared in 1972 . His…Read more
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13Het Ik En De Persoonsidentiteit In Russells Logisch AtomismeThe 'i' And Personal Identity In Russell's Logical AtomismBijdragen 58 (1): 29-55. 1997.Although the contributions of John Locke's memory-theory and David Hume's bundle-theory to the construction of the contemporary empiricist theory of personal identity are explicitly acknowledged, empiricist philosophers relatively neglect another important source of inspiration in their debate on personal identity in analytical philosophy, namely Bertrand Russell's philosophy of logical atomism. However, Derek Parfit's radically empiricist and impersonal view on personal identity implicitly is a…Read more