Laurance Joseph Splitter

In this ‘Reply’, I am critical of several aspects of Michael Hand’s paper ‘Moral education in the community of inquiry’. I do not agree that such terms as ‘standards’' 'and ‘directive' 'teaching’' 'are consistent with a proper understanding of 'inquiry 'generally, and 'philosophical inquiry', 'moral inquiry 'and 'community of inquiry', in particular. I also argue that the idea of 'openness', duly modified, remains central to all forms of inquiry, whether philosophical or otherwise. Finally, I cast doubt on Hand’s characterisation of the distinctions between controversial and uncontroversial, on the one hand, and justified' 'and unjustified, on the other, by reflecting critically on his own examples.

The normative ideals of democracy, trust and respect are under threat from the forces of populism and extremism. I argue for a recalibration of some basic ideas in the moral and social domains in which each person sees her/himself as one among others. I defend 0093The Principle of Personal Worth0094 which asserts that persons are more valuable than non-persons such as nations, religions, ethnicities, tribes, gangs, and cultures. The 0091collectivist0092 mentality denied by this principle is often held up against a strongly (individualist) or atomistic one. However, these two extremes are not the only possibilities.Collectivism and identity politics link our identities to those associations and institutions with which we identify. This link is based on a confusion between qualitative and quantitative identity. Our actual (numerical) identities are determined by a combination of semantic (conceptual) and deictic (referential) factors, not by our qualitative associations.The Alt-Right combines extremes of individualism and collectivism by way of self-serving narratives that simultaneously elevate the individual over the State, and promote the agendas of specific religious, ethnic, gender and sexuality groups. These impoverished narratives support an impoverished sense of community which functions as an echo chamber for its own ideas, while rejecting those coming from beyond its boundaries. Ultimately, the task of repairing and reconstructing such narratives lies in formal education. Teachers and students need to enact forms of discourse and community which are intellectually, ethically and affectively powerful, both as tools for better teaching and learning, and as preparation for living worthwhile lives.

Like many others, I have resisted the idea that education, in general, is a form of training. We always talk about training for something, while an educated person is not educated for any one thing. But for this very reason, I do not wish to abandon the term ‘teacher training’ in favor of ‘teacher education’, although ideally I would prefer to speak of ‘teacher preparation’ because the term ‘training’ always reminds me of monkeys. I shall use the terms ‘training’ and ‘preparation’ interchangeably, with both standing in contrast to ‘education’. All persons deserve to be educated; there is nothing specific to teachers here. Teacher training, whether general or specific to a subject or discipline, remains a contentious business. Some regard Pedagogy as a legitimate subject area and structure training around it; others prefer to see teacher training firmly in the context of the various disciplines that teachers will, in turn, be teaching: mathematics, literature, history and, in this case, philosophy. Indeed, when it comes to training teachers to teach philosophy, the problem is exacerbated by the plain fact that most teachers have no formal background in philosophy. So we are faced with the rather daunting prospect of providing such a background as well as providing whatever is needed in order to teach philosophy to others. Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp were well aware of this challenge when they set up the first training programs in Philosophy for Children at Montclair State College in the early 1970s; hence the requirement that if classroom teachers were not actually qualified in philosophy, at least those who trained them to do philosophy with children should be. However, this idealistic model was always going to be difficult to apply. The problem, as it developed in countries around the world, was two-fold: teachers with little or no philosophical background were, increasingly, being trained by other educators who were in the same boat ; and conversely, when professional philosophers did become involved in teacher training, it quickly became apparent that they lacked any real training in pedagogy, and so were inadequate to the task of modeling the role of the teacher in the classroom. To look on the bright side, some constructive attempts have been made to resolve these shortcomings. The one with which I am most familiar is the Australian model for what is termed ‘Level Two training’, that is, training those who will, in turn, train and work with classroom teachers. This model recognizes the complementary requirements of philosophical and pedagogic expertise, respectively, by awarding certificates of achievement based on whether those trained have come from the discipline of philosophy, the practice of teaching, or both. Ideally, then, training workshops for teachers would be directed by at least one person in the former category, and at least one in the latter.

I offer a modified characterisation of the dispositional grounds of inquiry, in which both the state of knowledge of those involved and their desire for answers or solutions are supplemented by a more nuanced set of dispositions, central to which is the intended transition from a state of unsettlement to one of settlement with respect to those who ask and respond to the questions. I test this characterisation against the Question Quadrant, a familiar device used by philosophy in schools practitioners to assist them and their students to identify philosophical questions and distinguish them from other kinds of question. While appreciating its practical utility, I submit that this device fails to capture key elements of what we mean, or should mean, by such terms as ‘open questions’ and ‘inquiry’, with respect both to philosophy and to other disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to test the contemporary concept of biological species against some of the problems caused by treating species as spatiotemporally extended entities governed by criteria of persistence, identity, etc. After outlining the general problem of symmetric division in natural objects, I set out some useful distinctions (section 1) and confirm that species are not natural kinds (section 2). Section 3 takes up the separate issue of species definition, focusing on the Biological Species Concept (BSC). Sections 4 and 5 examine the matter of species identity over space and time respectively, as determined by the BSC. Both gradualistic and punctuated equilibrium models of speciation are discussed. In section 6 I argue that the BSC fails to determine adequate criteria for dealing with certain kinds of speciation. Section 7 moves speculatively beyond the BSC to a brief examination of alternatives.

Questions of identity such as ‘Who am I?’ are often answered by appeals to one or more affiliations with a specific nation (citizenship), culture, ethnicity, religion, etc. Taking as given the idea that identity over time—including identification and re-identification—for objects of a particular kind requires that there be criteria of identity appropriate to things of that kind, I argue that citizenship, as a ‘collectivist’ concept, does not generate such criteria for individual citizens, but that the concept person—which specifies the kind of entity that I am—does generate such criteria. Confusion on this point has led some writers on citizenship to equivocate between identity for individuals and what is properly called self-determination in terms of their group affiliations and commitments. In the second part of the paper, I articulate and defend a relational view of personhood, and argue that it provides adequate grounding for morality in general, and moral education in particular. While not denying the value of civics or citizenship education, the link between morality and citizenship is derivative, at best. Finally, I examine the implications of a relational conception of personhood for the specific context of schools and classrooms, arguing that this conception is appropriately represented when the classroom functions as a community of inquiry, in which each member is encouraged to see her/himself as one among others. Drawing on the theory and practice of Philosophy for Children, I conclude with a call to reunite citizenship and moral education with their philosophical roots

I take as my starting point recent concerns from within educational psychology about the need to treat the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of empirical research in the field more seriously, specifically in the context of work on the self, mind and agency. Developing this theme, I find such conceptual support in the writings of P. F. Strawson and Donald Davidson, two giants of analytic philosophy in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Drawing particularly on Davidson’s later work, in which he seeks to integrate key claims about subjectivity, objectivity, belief, truth and knowledge, within what he refers to as a triangular framework of two speakers and a common world, I find support for pedagogic and classroom organizational structures based on collaborative thinking and dialogue. While Davidson did not write about education, I argue that his framework has much to offer, most particularly in view of the priority it affords language and dialogue as the necessary and sufficient conditions for reason, belief and thought—in short, for being a person in the world.

The ongoing series of global financial crises offers some important philosophical lessons and insights for educators. The epistemological lesson is stark: we should beware of certainty and all claims to it. Were the disposition of generic skepticism in place at all levels of schooling, then the intellectual rigidity that has characterized economics as a “discipline” would be balanced by demands to consider possible alternatives. The ethical lessons to be learned include ensuring that ethics, as a form of rigorous but openended inquiry into key questions about the kind of world in which we want to live, be included in every classroom and curriculum. At the center of this inquiry are relationships, most notably those between and among individual persons, on the one hand, and those between persons and the groups to which they belong and on which they are often said to depend, on the other. Such relationships also have an aesthetic dimension, in terms of their place in building, not just an ethically better world, but a more wholesome, integrated and harmonious world.