Plato's legacy : How to do philosophy

Although it has its origins earlier, philosophy as we know it in the West took its shape from the Socrates of Plato's Dialogues. It is not implausible to regard the Dialogues as heuristic devices designed for engaging in philosophical inquiry. As such, they would model the process of philosophical inquiry as well as illustrate the common pitfalls or errors to avoid when engaging in such inquiry. So it will not be surprising to see Socrates, the character of the Dialogues, modeling questionable, even poor, inquiry techniques as well as good; admonishing other characters for poor technique and reminding them of lessons they should have learned earlier in their tuition. Plato presumably would expect students reading and role-playing a Dialogue to recognise when and where such instances occur. It is instructive then to take a close look at one of the longer dialogues featuring Socrates engaging in such inquiry, not with an untutored interlocutor, but with a professional, the sophist Protagoras, in order to identify the features of the inquiry itself. For this will reveal something of what Plato conceived to be the activity of philosophy to which we are the heirs. The Protagoras can be read as an illustration (not a definition) of how to do philosophy. And to aid this reading, I propose to focus on the logical form of the inquiry, the moves made by the characters and the techniques displayed, rather than the adequacy of the substantive arguments they mount.

Intensive care nurses' perceptions of brain death

Research during the last 2 decades has revealed significant confusion or lack of acceptance and inconsistent application of the brain death concept within the medical and nursing professions. The aim of this naturalistic and descriptive study was to investigate the extent to which a sample of 40 Australian intensive care nurses regarded brain death as a meaningful conception of death. In contrast with the majority of the literature pertaining to health care professionals' perceptions of brain death which has focused upon clinical knowledge, the study elicited the expression of personal beliefs. The study utilised a structured interview method with nurses from seven metropolitan intensive care units (ICUs). Transcript analysis revealed five categories of perception constituting a spectrum ranging from complete acceptance to complete rejection, with almost half (48%, n=19) the sample regarding the brain dead patient as less than completely meaningfully dead.

Rather than supporting the literature's suggestion that non-acceptance of the medico-legally recognised brain death notion is, necessarily, evidence of professional ignorance, the findings suggest the participants holding these perceptions were generally well-informed about brain stem function and brain death diagnosis. The study affirms the importance of supportive workplace environments which facilitate the expression of dissonant perceptions and proposes that educators and managers must acknowledge these dissonances.

Shortest equals fastest : upper primary children`s pre-conceptions of speed

An understanding of speed as distance travelled per unit time is fundamental to the development of the more complex conception of acceleration. This paper examines the opportunities provided for upper primary children to reveal and modify their pre-conceptions of speed through a walking activity developed as part of the Practical Mechanics in Primary Mathematics project.

Cosmopolitanism as virtue

This paper explores cosmopolitanism, not as a position within political philosophy or international relations, but as a virtuous stance taken by individuals who see their responsibilities as extending globally. Taking as its cue some recent writing by Kwame Anthony Appiah, it argues for a number of virtues that are inherent in, and required by, such a stance. It is critical of what it sees as a limited scope in Appiah's conception and enriches it with Nigel Dower's concept of 'global citizenship'. It then seeks to overcome a distinction that Appiah draws between a 'thin' moral conception of justice and a 'thick' ethical conception of our obligations to those with whom we have identity-forming relationships. It argues that a richer conception of the virtue of justice, as suggested by Raimond Gaita, can fully articulate the ideals of cosmopolitanism.

What is Chinese about Chinese businesses? Locating the 'rise of China' in global production networks

There is an implicit but commonly held assumption that Chinese businesses are distinctively Chinese. Casting them in unitary and national terms, this assumption has often provided the underpinnings for the conception of the strength of Chinese businesses as signs of an emerging China threat. Drawing on a global production networks (GPN) approach, this paper aims to question the assumption by arguing that many Chinese businesses, embedded in the expanding global and regional production networks, have taken on important transnational characteristics. Given these transnational connections, Chinese business networks in both 'Greater China' and China proper are characterized more by diversity and fragmentation than by cultural coherence and homogeneity. This analysis of the transnationalization and fragmentation of contemporary Chinese businesses helps better understand and respond to the complex challenge posed by the economic dynamism in China.

Kant, or the crack in the universal : Slavoj Zizek's politicising the transcendental turn

This paper examines Slavoj Zizek’s reading of Immanuel Kant. Its undergirding argument is that Zizek’s work as a whole- up to and including his politically radical statements, which have become more and more prominent since 1997- is conceivable as a project in the rereading of the Kantian ‘Copernican Revolution’ via Lacanian psychoanalysis. Critics now agree that Zizek’s orienting aim is to write a philosophy of politics, as more recent texts, like The Ticklish Subject make clear. (Kay, 2003; Sharpe, 2004; Dean 2006) If Zizek’s philosophy is ultimately a philosophy of politics, however, Zizek’s political philosophy is grounded in a wider post or ‘neo’-Kantian philosophy of subjectivity.
The essay has three major parts. Part I gives Zizek’s reading of Kant on the subject of apperception. Part II recounts Zizek’s pivotal reading of Kant on the sublime, which he ties closely to the problematics of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ of the first Critique. Part III then examines Zizek’s conception of subjectivity in terms of the faculties (and especially the faculty of imagination) that Kant argues are involved in the transcendental constitution of objects in the first half of The Critique of Pure Reason.
In the Conclusion, the force of the paper’s subtitle—‘Politicising the Transcendental Turn’—will become manifest. I lay out three principles of Zizek’s ‘neoKantian/Hegelian’ ontology. These also make clear how his philosophy of political agency is grounded in this apparently suprapolitical or solely philosophical reading of Kant.

Cosmopolitanism, identity and recognition

An application of the social theory of Axel Honneth to global justice, arguing that development goals must include provision for the intersubjective recognition required for identity formation. In the disciplines of Political Philosophy and International Relations cosmopolitanism is often defined as the view that all people, no matter their national, ethnic or religious backgrounds and no matter what their gender, have an equal moral status. The most telling enunciation of this view is the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, the focus that is given to rights and a global form of legal equality by this document and by such theorists as John Rawls is not rich enough to capture all of the ethical demands that global society places upon well-to-do Westerners and developed nations. This paper makes use of a thesis by Axel Honneth to the effect that political thinking needs “a basic conceptual shift to the normative premises of a theory of recognition that locates the core of all experiences of injustice in the withdrawal of social recognition, in the phenomena of humiliation and disrespect.” Honneth identifies three spheres of recognition in modern societies: love, law, and achievement. I offer some exposition of his theory and then argue that global justice must be understood to embrace the substantive ethical values that arise in these three spheres as well as the procedural standards of moral rightness that belongs to the second of them. Such an expanded conception of global justice will yield an enriched conception of cosmopolitanism.

On the alleged failure of free will theodicies : a reply to Tierno

In a recent issue ofSophia Joel Tierno contends that free will theodicies are fundamentally flawed insofar as they claim to provide an adequate explanation for God’s permission of moral evil. Free will, according to Tierno, only accounts for our ability to make certain choices that issue in evil, but fails to account for the fact that we often do make such choices. However, the argument developed by Tierno, despite its initial appeal, embodies an important misunderstanding of the nature of free will theodicies and in particular the libertarian conception of human freedom customarily employed by these theodicies.

Second thoughts on the alleged failure of free will theodicies

In this paper I further the discussion on the adequacy of free will theodicies initiated by Joel Tierno. Tierno’s principal claim is that free will theodicies fail to account for the wide distribution of moral evil. I attempt to show that, even if Tierno need not rely on a compatibilist conception of free will in order to substantiate the aforementioned claim, there remains good reason to think that free will theodicies are not explanatorily inadequate in the way suggested by Tierno.

The evidential problem of evil

The evidential problem of evil is the problem of determining whether and (if so) to what extent the existence of evil (or certain instances, kinds, quantities, or distributions of evil) constitutes evidence against the existence of God, that is to say, a being perfect in power, knowledge and goodness. Evidential arguments from evil attempt to show that, once we put aside any evidence there might be in support of the existence of God, it becomes unlikely, if not highly unlikely, that the world was created and is governed by an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good being. Such arguments are not to be confused with logical arguments from evil, which have the more ambitious aim of showing that, in a world in which there is evil, it is logically impossible – and not just unlikely – that God exists.

This entry begins by clarifying some important concepts and distinctions associated with the problem of evil, before providing an outline of one of the more forceful and influential evidential arguments developed in contemporary times, viz., the evidential argument advanced by William Rowe. Rowe’s argument has occasioned a range of responses from theists, including the so-called "skeptical theist" critique (according to which God’s ways are too mysterious for us to comprehend) and the construction of various theodicies, that is, explanations as to why God permits evil. These and other responses to the evidential problem of evil are here surveyed and assessed.

Is theism capable of accounting for any natural evil at all?

Received wisdom has it that a plausible explanation or theodicy for Gods permission of at least some instances of natural evil is not beyond the reach of the theist. In this paper I challenge this assumption, arguing instead that theism fails to account for any instance, kind, quantity, or distribution of natural evil found in the world. My case will be structured around a specific but not idiosyncratic conception of natural evil as well as an examination of three prominent theodicies for natural evil. In contrast, however, to much contemporary discussion, my assessment of these theodicies will be grounded in the prior conviction that a successful theodicy for moral evil is available.

Practising gender : the production of identity by school children

The thesis utilises ‘practice theory’ to argue that the self is not only an effect of social practices but also a technique for action and develops an alternative way of explicating and conceptualising the constitution of the self within the micro-practices of routine, everyday life. This is in contrast to a general tendency within ‘practice theory’, ‘constructionist’ and ‘discursive’ approaches towards a determinist conception of the self. The thesis explores this conceptual framework in fieldwork focussed on formation and production of gender-identity among young school children and offers a new perspective of gender-identity in the classroom. The thesis provides a fourfold contribution: (1) It provides insights into how in the classroom, children take up (conventional) gender differentiated conduct and dispositions in order to forge both their identity and the establishment of a social order based on gender. This gender order is not simply imposed on them by teachers but is actively constructed by the children. The thesis provides insights into how the children in the classroom seize and appropriate the practices of gender for their own ends. These ends, I argue, are the construction of their gender-identity, and the establishment and maintenance of a ‘matrix of intelligibility’. (2) It offers a close-up illustration of how gender construction is negotiated and contested between girls and boys. This is characterised as largely a struggle for enablement — the power to be and to do — rather than as a struggle of one gender over another. (3) It develops an analysis of classrooms as productive sites, as ‘complex strategical situations’ in which the participating agents — the teachers and students—deploy and utilise available resources in their ongoing construction of the world. This suggests that that the social world is not as unitary and totalising as ‘constraint perspectives’ within practice theory often imply. (4) It proposes methodological perspectives and strategies for researching empirically the day-to-day production of gender and for capturing that complex and often elusive process ‘in flight’. It shows the value of an ‘ascending analysis’, one that does not foreclose findings on the basis of a pre-existing theoretical position, and the rich potential of ‘flashpoints’ as a way of illuminating ongoing and often ‘unremarkable’ and therefore unnoticed practices of gender production. The theoretical terrain explored a range of theorists on the self not usually brought together, including Butler, Rose, Foucault, Giddens and Garfinkel and Schatzki. These theorists share in common the perspective that social practices rather than the agent or social totality are the ontological basis of the social world. It is argued that the self is constituted in its enactment and the thesis pursues Foucault’s (2002) question of how the self participates in its own subjectification. The empirical focus of the thesis examined the activities of children at school for insights into how they participated in the making of their gender-identity. The research addressed the questions: (1) To what extent do children construct their gender-identity and what kinds of encouragement do they receive for this? (2) To what extent did the children seem to be appropriating gender practices and inciting the making of gender-identity in the classroom? (3) To what extent can the classroom be viewed as a site of gender contestation and borderwork? Using the concept of ‘flashpoints’, — significant or poignant moments in the classroom — classroom activities were observed to catch gender-identity production ‘in flight’ and to describe how the children seize upon moments to make gender salient. Year Three children in five classrooms in two Victorian schools were observed during English communication and literacy lessons. Individual interviews with teachers in the participating schools and group interviews with the children from the classrooms were undertaken to amplify the observations. Much of the children’s behaviour can be interpreted as their efforts to make gender salient in social interactions. Gender-identity production and gender ‘border work’ (Thorne, 1993) and contestation appeared to be a major activity and preoccupation of the children, even in the face of teacher’s attempts to encourage a gender-neutral environment The children were often more active than the teachers in imposing the ‘gender agenda’ identified by Evans (1988). Overall, this thesis contributes to the development of the theory of subjectivity and identity formation. Social practices are not imposed and individuals seize upon social practices to further their own ends. It is through these routine, everyday activities that social practices are reproduced. The study provides an avenue for understanding the actions of children and the operation of gender power and border work within the classroom.

Dialogue with Hans-Georg Gadamer : the contribution of hermeneutics to understanding what a person is saying

This thesis reviews the development of philosophy of interpretation since the nineteenth century exemplified in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, It recognizes Gadamer as the foremost philosopher of hermeneutics in the twentieth century, who draws together the contributions of his predecessors into a major new development. The theme upon which this thesis engages in dialogue with Gadamer is concentrated on the problem of making experience the sole object of hermeneutics to the exclusion of persons and what they say, considered objectively. The problem with this is to express the role of interpretative practices philosophically if non-objectifying thinking is normative for hermeneutics. A solution is found by following up Gadamer’s insight into the influence of tradition on understanding, I show that tradition and its truth, as well as not being separable from the understanding subject's thinking, are also not detached from an author's intentions and are shared by human beings understanding one another. The transmissive nature of tradition discloses its own method for understanding what a person is saying and the ethical requirements of truth are forwarded by following that method.

Studies in supervisory practice : the effectiveness of the practicum in teacher education in the Northern Territory

In this thesis we descend into the swampy lowlands to meet with student-teachers and their supervisors and observe them working together at different sites across the Top End of Australia. In the process we discover the multiple relationships that comprise the practicum text and the discomforting untidiness and unwieldiness, as well as the awkwardness of complexity, which surrounds research into supervisory practice. The thesis demonstrates the need to attend to the subjectivities of the participants and highlights the conflicting attitudes, beliefs, interests, and desires which are only partially realised or understood. It moves us beyond language to the sentient world of anger, love, disgust, hope, fear, despair, joy, anguish, and pain and we become immersed in a murky, incoherent, interior world of hints, shadows, and unfamiliar sounds, a world of lost innocence and conflict in which knowledge is truly embodied. Encompassing a view of supervision as moral praxis, particular attention was given to the care and protection of the self and a romanticist conception of the self was seen to predominate. The thesis demonstrates the part played by positioning and agency in the process of subjectification, the importance of emotional and relational bonding in the emergence of collegiality, the tactics of power employed by supervisors, the struggle for personal autonomy, the presence of anxiety induced by failure to pro vide feedback, the inculcation of guilt, and the complex interplay of age-related and gender effects. Attention is also given to the degree to which supervisors adopt reflective and constructivist approaches to their work. The stories reveal that supervision is much more than advising student-teachers on curriculum content, resource availability and lesson presentation. It is a process of interiority in which supervisors may need to provide emotional support in the face of displacement and disorientation, and assume the role of an abiding presence, someone capable of imaginative introjection, someone who ‘knows’. Particular attention is paid to the language of supervision which was marked by indirection, diffidence, imprecision, irony, and understatement. At the same time, the agonistic nature of language associated with the politics of the personal is made apparent. Whilst in the opinion of Liaison Lecturers, context-of-site did not appear to matter as far as acquiring teaching competence was concerned, the failure to attend to context-of-site affected how student-teachers engaged with difference and diversity. In spite of attempts to contest the myths of Aboriginal education and interrupt the discourse of impoverishment, colonialist attitudes and resistance to liberatory education persisted. The thesis ends with suggestions for alternatives to the traditional practicum and discusses the introduction of Field-Based Teacher Education into Northern Territory schools.

Beyond Abrahamism : a fresh reading of the Tanakh traditions respecting Lot, Moab and Ammon

At the heart of this study is my interest in the way in which a religious community establishes its sense of identity and its boundaries in relation to other groups. I explore the case of Israel's attitude towards her eastern neighbours, the Moabites and Ammonites, as portrayed in Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. Most commentary from the last one hundred years privileges one particular view of Moab and Ammon as traditional enemies of Israel. I aim to show the validity of readings of the biblical accounts that reveal a more complex relationship between Israel and her neighbours. Tanakh exhibits a dialectic between eirenic and hostile viewpoints. The stories of Abraham and Lot, who are presented as ancestors of Israel and of Moab and Ammon, to some degree represent Israel’s understanding of her neighbours. Conventional commentaries take for granted the accepted orthodoxy of Judaism, Christianity and Islam concerning Abraham and his significance in terms of faith and righteousness and blessing and covenant. As none of these notions is specifically linked to Lot at any point, he is treated as a pathetic figure and remains secondary in conventional commentary. Many commentaries denigrate the character of Lot, often in direct comparisons with Abraham. My reading of the texts of Genesis attempts to free the story of Lot from the constraints imposed by the way the story of Abraham functions. A careful reading of the Genesis account shows that Lot and Abraham exhibit similar elements of moral ambiguity, and Genesis contains no statement that condemns Lot on moral or religious grounds. Genesis 19, the single narrative in which Lot appears independently of Abraham, participates in the dialectic elsewhere in Tanakh. On the basis of a consistent pattern of action and speech throughout the first portion of Genesis 19, I advance my own original conception of the eirenic viewpoint of the narrator concerning Lot and his relationship to the divine. I attempt to demonstrate ways in which the story of Lot critiques or deconstructs the dominant ideology centred upon Abraham. My conception of the particular interests of the compiler of Genesis 19 is supported by several intertextual studies. These include the traditions of Sodom and of Zoar, the story of hospitality in Judges 19, the story of the deluge (Genesis 6-9) and stories of women who, like Lot’s daughters, act to continue the family line. In a treatment of the history of Lot traditions, I find evidence to separate the story of Lot from the work of the Yahwist. I consider whether the stories of Lot have a derivation east of the Jordan and whether the stories were of particular interest to the Deuteronomists. In the final chapter of this study, I focus on the main themes of the narratives concerning Lot and Abraham, and Moab and Ammon and Israel. The question of social boundaries arises in regard to many of these themes, such as the interaction of female and male, the role of wealth, the relation of city and country, kinship, and rights to land settlement. In this way, the treatment of Lot and Abraham in Tanakh and in subsequent traditions offers a perspective upon the formation of identity in the contemporary world of religious plurality.