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6Michael Williams and the hypothetical worldMinerva - An Internet Journal of Philosophy 6 (1). 2002.Michael Williams has frequently considered and rejected approaches to "our knowledge of the external world" that see it as the best explanation for certain features of experience. This paper examines the salience of his position to approaches such as Mackie’s that do not deny the presentational directness of ordinary experience but do permit a gap between how things appear and how they are that allows for sceptical doubts. Williams’ main argument is that, to do justice to its place in a foundati…Read more
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7On What Isn't Learned in SchoolThinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 5 (4): 22-28. 1985.
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Michael Williams And The Hypothetical WorldMinerva 6 151-161. 2002.Michael Williams has frequently considered and rejected approaches to “our knowledge of the external world”that see it as the best explanation for certain features of experience.This paper examines the salience of his position to approaches such as Mackie’s that do not deny thepresentational directness of ordinary experience but do permit a gap between how things appear and how theyare that allows for sceptical doubts.Williams’ main argument is that, to do justice to its place in a foundationali…Read more
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72Is "A needs X" Elliptical?Grazer Philosophische Studien 45 125-134. 1993.While "A needs X" often calls for supplementation by the Y X is needed for, Thomson, Wiggins and Braybrooke have argued that there is a sense of "need" for which this is unnecessary. But Gricean conventions for conversation allow us to use ellipsis in a unified account of "need" while explaining the data Thomson and Wiggins appeal to: nondetatchment of bare needs from more fully specified ones, avoidance of serious harm as a default filling of the Y-slot, and the apparent normativeness of some n…Read more
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8How to Choose the BestJournal of Philosophy of Education 34 (3): 443-460. 2000.This chapter deals with a crucial component of our position, the presumption that there are objective grounds for preferring one thing to another within the various cultural institutions we deal with, that there are better or worse symphonies, soufflés and theories of the atom. The task of showing this is more urgent for some institutions than others. While philosophers can doubt anything, most people are persuaded of the objectivity of our efforts to comprehend the physical world and to weigh, …Read more
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80California Unnatural: On Fine’s Natural Ontological AttitudePhilosophical Quarterly 47 (187): 232-235. 1997.Abela accepts Fine’s account of realism and instrumentalism, but thinks that we can reject the Natural Ontological Attitude by distinguishing the theoretical attempt to make sense of scientific practice from choosing the attitude we bring to the debate, or to science itself. But Abela’s attitudes are vulnerable to Fine’s criticisms of the philosophical positions. However, if we take attitude as contrastive and as full‐blooded enough to lead to different behaviour we can see a gap in Fine’s posit…Read more
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6The Plurality of CulturesJournal of Philosophy of Education 34 (3): 507-523. 2000.Arnold wrote in an educational tradition that both lay in a main line of descent from the cultural formations he most valued and equipped him with the tools necessary to appreciate many of the elements in those traditions that are not in his native language. So when he referred, as exemplars of high culture, to Homer and Cicero, Montesquieu and Goethe, he presumed acquaintance with their works in the original languages on his own part and on that of his audience. His own vernacular derived from …Read more
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1Roger P. Mourad, Jr., Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 18 (3): 211-212. 1998.
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5Can Teachers Live with the Truth about Teaching? A Reaction to Morrill and SteffyJournal of Thought 17 (2): 13-17. 1982.
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15Popular CultureJournal of Philosophy of Education 34 (3): 461-485. 2000.J. Gingell, E. P. Brandon; Popular Culture, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 34, Issue 3, 7 March 2003, Pages 461–485, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-97.
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13The two forms, the two attitudes, and the four kinds of awarenessEducational Philosophy and Theory 16 (1). 1984.
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13A ForerunnerJournal of Philosophy of Education 34 (3): 401-414. 2000.In the course of this book we shall frequently appeal to what we call an Arnoldian filter, a principle we wish to urge for choosing much of what should form part of education in schools. This priniciple is based on a remark in Matthew Arnold's Preface to Culture and Anarchy,1 that culture is a matter of getting ‘to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world’ (1935, p.6, emphasis added). Arnold's work here and elsewhere is often seen as a…Read more
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39Supposition, Conditionals and Unstated PremisesInformal Logic 14 (2). 1992.Informal logicians recognise the frequent use of unstated assumptions; some (e.g. Fisher) also recognise entertained arguments and recommend a suppositional approach (such as Mackie's) to conditional statements. It is here argued that these two be put together to make argument diagrams more accurate and subtle. Philosophical benefits also accrue: insights into Jackson's apparent violations of modus tollens and contraposition and McGee's counterexamples to the validity of modus ponens
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8The Two Forms, the Two Attitudes, and the Four Kinds of AwarenessEducational Philosophy and Theory 16 (1): 1-11. 1984.
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