Journal Philosophical Investigations (university of Tabriz)

This paper responds to the question of should civic education still aim to be relatively politically neutral and impartial in undemocratic times? It first introduces the theoretical debate regarding the place of political neutrality and impartiality in civic education. It then dicusses the challenges that civic education faces in the current global environment and why political neutrality and impartiality should not be considered as antidotes. We argue that political neutrality and impartiality are insufficient in the undemocratic times we face for preparing students to be effective and engaged citizens. A more powerful response to our global undemocratic reality is needed to realize the transformative nature of civic education.

Experience and subjectivity influence how texts are read, with reading involving “filling in the blanks”. This impacts the usefulness of intercoder reliability exercises in collaborative textbook analysis. Specifically, scholars’ individual backgrounds limit possibilities for substantive and meaningful intercoder reliability, particularly in international, cross-cultural, and multicultural settings. In this case, reliability is a problematic goal in textbook content analysis, possibly precluding substantive recognition of reader subjectivity—of researchers as well as students and teachers. In contrast, we argue that collaboration in textbook research can reveal the multifaceted nature of texts and generate multi-perspectival interpretations which are more meaningful in diverse contexts.

After offering an overview of some of the main themes of Popper’s political thought, the paper argues that his account faces two problems relating to institutions. The first is that while Popper stresses the ‘rational unity of mankind’, and the potential for any of us to furnish criticisms of public policy, it is not clear what institutional means currently exist for this to enable this to take place. Second, Popper has stressed the conjectural character of even our best theories. However, at any point, some theories will have fared better in the face of criticism than others, and they may give us important information about constraints on our actions. At the same time, as ordinary citizens we may not be in a good position to understand the theories in question, let alone appraise the state of the specialised discussion of them. There is, it is suggested, a case for thinking of ways to institutionally entrench such fallible theories, especially in the current setting in which social media play an important role.

Haack articulates something of what she takes the moral demands of academic life to be, calling for such virtues as industry, honesty, realism, patience, and consideration. She then explains why she believes the current academic environment is sapping the strength of character these virtues require, and why graduate students are caught in the middle. She writes primarily about philosophy, but much of what she has to say applies to other humanities disciplines and much of that to other disciplines as well---and while she writes primarily about the U.S. situation, much of what she says applies elsewhere too.

Mulla Sadra has experienced three philosophical journeys: the originality of nature, the originality of existence of gradational oneness and the originality of existence of personal oneness. These three journeys are the main principles of Transcendent Theosophy, and any kind of evolution in them leads to evolutions in minor issues. Due to the systematic connection of the issues, in the issue of the reality of science and various issues related to it, there should be evolutions that are proportional to the three mentioned journeys. According to the first journey of science, the science is from the category of accident and as a result, it is an essential affair, while according to the requirements of the second and third journey, the science has coexistence with existence. This transformation leads to transformation in many minor issues and creates fundamental differences. The issues of the first journey are more influenced by the non-existential view of the realities related to the subject of science, which is referred to as the foundation of qảvm in pre-Sadrai philosophy. In this article, due to the position and opportunity, we will address and analyze some important preliminary issues, which include: the position of discussion, the essential or existential nature of science, being nature or concept of science, the definition of science, the equivocality of names or commonality of meaning of science, being contiguous or analogous of science and the type of attribution proposed in science based on three philosophical journeys.

The aim of this paper is to consider whether critical rationalism has any ideas which could usefully be applied to the internet. Today we tend to take the internet for granted and it is easy to forget that it was only about two decades ago that it began to be used to any significant extent. Accordingly in section 1 of the paper, there is a brief consideration of the history of the internet. At first sight this makes it looks implausible that any of Popper’s ideas could be applicable to the internet, since Popper died before the internet came into general use. However, section 2 argues that Popper’s theory of World 3 does apply very well to the internet. This application is significant because, as shown in section 3, it leads to the problem of misinformation, which is one of the most significant problems generated by the internet. In section 4 there is an attempt to solve this problem using ideas taken from Popper’s epistemology. It is argued that there should be changes in education designed to prepare students for the internet age. Teaching in the internet age should focus on presenting to the students not just the accepted theories but also the evidence on which they are based. An illustration of how this might be done is given by considering an example from science teaching, namely the teaching of Newtonian mechanics in the last years of school or first years of university.