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Introduction
Get PDFPuna Aurei / LearnFest is an annual symposium focusing on innovation in tertiary education. It transitioned online during the pandemic, broadening its global reach and leading to a partnership with Cardiff University. The 2022 theme, Revitalisation, addressed the rejuvenation of higher education, teaching practices, and specific disciplines. The contributions in this volume are organised into four themes: Key Challenges, exploring professional identities and curriculum indigenization; Motivation, examining learner and teacher engagement; Gamification, discussing educational games and pedagogies; Confronting Climate Change, tackling its educational impact; and Revitalising English Medium Instruction, exploring responses to disruptions in international education
Intellectual Character and the News Media Audience: the Role of Intellectual Virtue in Pursuing Successful Knowledge Claims
No full textThis thesis explores the role of the audience within contemporary news media and how individual epistemic agents can make knowledge claims based on news media outputs. The aim is to show that the news media‟s audience plays an active role in the inter-relationships between themselves, media practitioners and media organisations. Further, it is argued that individual epistemic agents, as members of the audience of the news media, must exercise intellectual virtues in order to make successful knowledge claims based on news media publications and to be an active audience. The First Chapter considers contemporary media ethics and shows that the audience has largely been viewed as passive and has been under-evaluated when compared to the inter-relationship between practitioners and media organisations. Chapter Two evaluates the role of truth in the news media and how this affects trust of the news media within society. The Third Chapter introduces virtue epistemology, an approach which seeks to address the weaknesses of foundationalist accounts of knowledge by appealing to the cultivation and development of intellectually virtuous character traits of virtue epistemic individuals as responsible inquirers. This thesis argues that the application of Linda Zagzebski‟s theory of virtue epistemology has significant advantages for agents seeking knowledge based on news media outputs. The Fourth Chapter explores the application of intellectual virtues to knowledge acquisition based on contemporary news media examples; and finds that the traits of open-mindedness, inquisitiveness, thoroughness, and intellectual carefulness are of particular benefit to the audience in making successful knowledge claims based on news media publications. The thesis is concluded by arguing that the audience, as individual epistemic agents within a democratic society, have an active role in interpreting and shaping news media publications
Sex, Metaphysics, and Mental 'Dis-ease'
No full textThe ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus believed that our metaphysics determines our state of mind: a correct view of the nature of human and worldly existence brings inner peace and tranquillity; an incorrect view, inner turmoil. More recently, Australian philosopher John Bigelow lamented that, despite over 2000 years of theorizing, philosophers have yet to reach consensus on a correct metaphysics. This thesis posits the source of this metaphysical discontent to be the Platonic/Aristotelian conception of essence (or form) as a purely immaterial, male preserve, thereby reducing woman to the material source, (Logical) properties and (sexual) demise of man’s essential being; this phallocentric misconception impelling a history of further misconceptions of essence, and of the metaphysical theories and binary logic based upon it. Through the construction of a genealogy and critique of various historical (re)conceptions and permutations of essence, I theorize the existence of an originary spirogenetic essence that causes, determines and motivates the (whole) individual, species, and sexuate form, function, growth, and development of every human being, the metaphysical and symbolic denial of this essence resulting in, not just inner turmoil, but some forms of mental disorder.
Empirical research into female self-development and eating disorders yielded support for the hypothesis of a spirogenetic essence and essentially whole, subjective (sexual) female self, the metaphysically based, familialy/socially imposed denial, (de)construction and demonization of which is causing its fragmentation and loss, and the existential need to reconstruct this real, ‘de-formed’ sexual female self/body into the ideal feminine ‘form’ - the perfect pretend self - that will earn Paternal recognition, love, approval, and thus, ongoing subjective existence. While in modern, pre-feminist times, this perfect self was conceived and constructed as the sexual object of male desire, appropriation and control, in these post-feminist, post-modern times in which boys/men are reclaiming the feminine, girls/women have no option but to do what Plato advised, and ‘become a man’. That is, they must hide/erase their real sexual female self/body and attain the boyishly perfect form/function that promises (limited) imitative access to phallic subjectivities and identities.
Failure to attain or maintain this perfect, pretend (prophylactic) self, and a consequent state of existential distress, is resulting in eating and associated disorders, as an inner, self-adjudicated battle to control, punish, purify, desexualize, defeminize, and thus perfectly ‘re-form’, the real ('Eve-il') sexual female self, as a means of subjective survival. This understanding resituates current discursive approaches to anorexia/bulimia as part of its pathogenic origin; resolution of these and associated existential (dis)orders requiring the metaphysical/social/discursive recognition of what Plato/Aristotle denied: a sexed, spirogenetic essence that is the source of persisting sameness and difference, fixity and fluidity, unity and plurality, and thus, of an essentially whole, subjective fe/male self that can only fully exist, develop, and be constructed within enduring bonds of unconditional, intersubjective recognition and love. It is within this spirogenetic model of human and worldly existence - as it frees patriarchal man from his forbidden, feared, feminizing, ho(m)mosexual desires - that I glimpse that long-sought Epicurean state of peace, contentment, and ‘ease’
PeaceMaker: using an online educational game on Middle East politics as an ‘Object To Think With’ (OTTW) in a Masters-level Public Policy course
Get PDFTeaching causality in complex adaptive systems to tertiary students poses dual challenges: presenting key concepts like tipping points, emergence, nonlinearity, path dependency, and feedback; and then guiding students to grasp the uncertainties these entail for policy and decision-making. While the pedagogical value of educational games is increasingly recognised, there is little consensus on underlying learning theories or game design principles. In particular, as traditional behaviourist approaches do not address the implications of complex systems, the author (teaching a Masters-level Public Policy course) used the Israeli/Palestinian politics game, PeaceMaker, in a more constructivist approach that understands games as “objects-to-think-with” (OTTWs)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
John Dewey’s Epistemological Naturalism and the Prospects for a Normative Scientific Epistemology
No full textIn this thesis, I inquire into the prospects for a normative and scientific epistemology arising from the version of naturalism that dominates Dewey’s later work. I focus on questions such as: Are there peculiar features of Dewey’s naturalism that address important concerns of traditional epistemology, such as setting up normative criteria for justifying our claims to knowledge? Does his naturalism engender merging epistemology with science? How relevant are Dewey’s original views to contemporary debates in epistemology?
In setting up Dewey’s position, which I call epistemological naturalism, I explore how the conceptions of reality and human experience in his naturalist metaphysics serve as a road-map for his epistemology. I explore how his arguments that the world is a mixture of interchanging stable and precarious events and his description of human experience as transaction within nature set the stage for defining all forms of inquiry as problem-driven. I also explore how this conception of inquiry leads to the conception of knowledge as ultimately practical and instrumental. I argue that Dewey’s instrumentalist and practical conception of knowledge is ideal for the traditional goal of epistemology identified as attainment of truth and avoidance of error. However, I also explore how his position challenges traditional epistemology by replacing the traditional theoretical or conceptual approach to knowledge with a practical and experimental approach, encouraging practical or empirical methodologies. I discuss how this approach to knowledge makes paradigms of knowledge in technological science more relevant to epistemology than those of the natural sciences.
I then focus on the continuity of Dewey’s original ideas in two ways: how they are preserved in Richard Rorty’s neo-pragmatism and how they are relevant to debates about knowledge in contemporary philosophy. On the connection between Dewey’s philosophy and Rorty’s neo-pragmatism, I explore how the similarities in Dewey and Rorty’s critique of traditional epistemology qualify the latter as a Deweyan. However, I argue that Rorty’s popular position, that Philosophy must transcend itself to cultural criticism has no basis in Dewey’s philosophy.
I turn to consider how Dewey’s analysis of human experience, human-nature symbiotic relations and the social nature of knowledge can resolve some of the disagreements among contemporary social epistemologists on the nature and subject-matter of their inquiry. I also consider how Dewey’s instrumentalist conception of knowledge can contribute to contemporary debates on whether knowledge is a natural kind.
The thesis is in two parts. The first part is a critical exposition of Dewey’s metaphysics and epistemology. Part Two relates Dewey’s views to contemporary philosophy. In Chapter One I articulate how most versions of naturalism are concerned with rendering philosophical views on knowledge and existence more tenable by appealing to science. Two main approaches are identified: radical naturalists suggest the adoption of the ontology or methodologies of science, and moderate naturalists admit the usefulness of some of the methods and paradigms of science in some specific areas in philosophy. I argue that both positions involve controversial conceptions of how philosophy and science relate to each another. For instance, I explore how some radical naturalists ambiguously use the word “science”. I also discuss the objection that the radical position reduces philosophy to science. In Chapter Two I discuss Dewey’s naturalist conception of experience and reality, and in Chapter Three his theory of knowledge. These are the metaphysical and epistemological components of his naturalism. I explore how the empirical nature of Dewey’s metaphysics and the practical-experimental emphasis of his epistemology challenge traditional metaphysics and epistemology.
The second part has three chapters. In Chapter Four I discuss similarities in Dewey and Rorty’s rejection of traditional theories such as foundationalism, representationalism and essentialism, and other related views which the duo described as absolutist conceptions of knowledge and truth, such as the Spectator Theory of Knowledge and the conception of the human mind as a mirror of nature. I disagree with Rorty’s conclusion that Dewey totally dismissed the preoccupations of traditional epistemology and metaphysics, a position Rorty described as therapeutic. I argue that Dewey replaces all theories he rejected with alternative naturalistic views. I conclude that this suggests continuity with traditional philosophy rather than envisaging a post-Philosophy culture as suggested by Rorty.
In Chapter Five I consider how Dewey’s conceptions of the cause, nature, and goal of inquiry as ultimately a social affair resolve some disagreements between radical social epistemologists (such as Fuller) and moderate social epistemologists (such as Goldman and Kornblith) on the nature and subject-matter of social epistemology. From Dewey’s identification of problematic human transactions with nature as the common factor in all forms of inquiry, I consider the possibility of establishing what could be regarded as the basis for all human knowledge. The importance of this position is explored in terms of preventing relativism. In Chapter Six I compare Kornblith’s contention that knowledge is a natural kind with Dewey’s contention that knowledge is a natural transaction, and argue that the latter offers more tenable prospects for a normative scientific epistemology.
My overall conclusion is that taking a Deweyan approach to knowledge engenders an inter-disciplinary approach which makes resources in sociology, anthropology, biology, and technological science relevant to epistemology. By defining normativity in terms of how knowledge is managed to facilitate successful human transaction within nature, epistemic claims are opened to empirical evaluation
Motivations for Learning Welsh among Adult Learners
Get PDFThe rise of online learning in recent years has led to an
increase in the number of people learning Welsh as
adults, particularly outside Wales, and more diversity in
the way in which the language is learned. Drawing on
a quantitative questionnaire completed by 746 Welsh
learners, 47.5% of whom lived outside Wales, this chapter
examines the motivations of Welsh learners and the
extent to which such motivations are influenced by social
factors
Morality, art, and moral education in the philosophy of Iris Murdoch
Get PDFIn this research, the main focus is the educational role of art in the individual’s moral life. I begin by offering an account of Murdoch’s moral theory and discuss the concepts central to this theory. I argue that Murdoch’s moral theory is a form of virtue ethics, to demonstrate why moral education is important in her philosophy. I will then discuss the unique elements of Murdoch’s moral philosophy, especially her discussion of the concepts of imagination and fantasy, which is directly related to her theory of art and the role art plays in moral education.
Drawing on my discussion of imagination and fantasy, I will go on to discuss Murdoch’s theory of art, focusing on her discussion of unity and disunity in art. I critically examine this view and discuss its drawbacks and show how, with a bit of modification, her view can be applied to most art forms. Finally, I draw on Murdoch’s moral view and her theory of art to develop a Murdochian view of the morally educational role of art, drawing on the few comments or suggestions that are found scattered throughout her work. I argue that both the artist and the recipient of art play important roles in making an artwork morally educational
Commentary on: Tone Kvernbekk's "Evidence-based practice (EBP), means-end reasoning and goal directed theories"
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