JURGEN HABERMAS AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEORY OF DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

The paper presents Jürgen Habermas' epistemological views on the theory of deliberative democracy. Habermas has been constructing a series of assumptions since the 1970ies about his Theory of Communicative Action to overcome the crisis of legitimacy. This position stems from the critique of the deep chasm that exists between the "constitutional-democratic legal order" as a normative framework and how forms of social power are imposed to undermine the legitimate process of passing laws. The course of Habermas's argumentation theorizing about communicative action and the communicatively based process of (democratic) political decision-making brings with it the potential to break with the procedural argumentation of the representatives of the so-called aggregate models of democratic practice. For the development of the theory of deliberative democracy, its sociological sharpness may be important, with the help of which the social basis of legal projects and public policies leads to the clarification of the external tension that exists between facticity and validity. Thus, Habermas respects the differences between facts and norms in every contemporary concept of law. This can be called the legal theory of deliberative democracy that has shaped the modern understanding of the conception and practice of deliberative democracy.

Prospective primary teachers’ views on the nature of science

This article presents the results of a piece of research that analyzed the views on the nature of science (NOS) among student teachers enrolled in programs of Primary Education at two public universities in Spain. Previous studies have reported that science teachers maintain ‘eclectic’ epistemological perspectives on science; in this article, we test if such a hypothesis holds when teachers’ NOS ideas are ‘anchored’ in specific periods and topics of the philosophy of science. We studied 114 prospective teachers attending an undergraduate teaching course with emphasis on the natural sciences at the Universities of Burgos and Valladolid in the period of 2017-18. A Likert-scale questionnaire with 50 items was applied to determine trends in those teachers’ epistemological views on science. The results showed that teachers’ views are mostly correlated with the philosophical period of Logical Positivism/Received View, and to some extent to the period of Recent and Contemporary Accounts. Regarding the classical epistemological topics of correspondence, methodologies, intervention, evolution and representation, teachers’ views could be related to the period of Logical Positivism/Received View and Critical Rationalism, but also to the New Philosophy of Science. The main conclusion of this study is that teachers’ expressed views on NOS are epistemologically eclectic to a much smaller degree when examined with more detail concerning specific periods and topics of the philosophy of science.

Towards a three-part heuristic framework for technology education

There is not one single global version of technology education; curricula and standards have different forms and content. This sometimes leads to difficulties in discussing and comparing technology education internationally. Existing philosophical frameworks of technological knowledge have not been used to any great extent in technology education. In response, the aim of this article is to construct a heuristic framework for technology education, based on professional and academic technological knowledge traditions. We present this framework as an epistemological tripod of technology education with mutually supporting legs. We discuss how this tripod relates to a selection of epistemological views within the philosophy of technology. Furthermore, we apply the framework to the Swedish and English technology curricula, to demonstrate its utility as an analytic tool when discerning differences between national curricula. Each leg of the tripod represents one category of technological knowledge: (1) technical skills, (2) technological scientific knowledge and (3) socio-ethical technical understanding. The heuristic framework is a conceptual model intended for use in discussing, describing, and comparing curriculum components and technology education in general, and potentially also as support for planning and conducting technology teaching. It may facilitate common understanding of technology education between different countries and technology education traditions. Furthermore, it is a potentially powerful tool for concretising the components of technological literacy.

Introduction

Throughout the dialogues Plato contrasts epistêmê, a superior kind of cognition, with doxa, an inferior one. It is widely assumed that Plato is discussing knowledge and belief. But many of his epistemological views are so hard to construe as views about knowledge and belief that it is worth questioning this assumption. Moreover, the history of Plato scholarship shows us that the assumption is quite recent. Once we accept that Plato’s central epistemological concepts may be radically different from ours, however, we must reassess his whole project: what is he doing when he does epistemology, and what is his epistemology about? The project of the book is to answer these questions by taking as a starting point what is arguably the most radical difference between Plato’s epistemology and ours: his claim, in the Republic and other dialogues, that epistêmê is of being and doxa of something inferior.

Philosophy, Death, and Education

Often regarded as one of life’s few certainties, death is both instantly familiar to us and deeply mysterious. Every adult will have encountered death in some form, sometimes through the loss of a family member, sometimes less directly via friendships with others or the viewing of news items on television or the Internet. Yet, few take the time to examine death closely and to consider its significance in shaping human lives. Death is of interest both for what we know about it (in observing and living with others who die) and for what we do not know about it (“What will happen to me after I die?”). Death seems, on the face of it, to lend itself well to both philosophical and educational inquiry. For, if, as Socrates claimed, philosophy prepares us for death, this suggests an educational process (“How does it prepare us?”) that warrants careful investigation. It is, however, not just philosophy that prepares us for death but also death that prepares us for philosophy. Our understanding of death can exert a powerful but often unnoticed influence over our ontological and epistemological views, our ethical commitments, and our educational endeavors. Death can prompt us to ask: What does it mean to be a human being? What do we value and why? What and how should we seek to know? How should we live?

Are There Heavyweight Perceptual Reasons?

Genia Schönbaumsfeld has recently argued for the view that our ordinary perceptual reasons provide support for heavyweight metaphysical and epistemological views, such as that there is a mind-independent physical world. Call this the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis. In this paper, I argue that we should reject the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis. I also argue that the rejection of the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis is compatible with the Factive Perceptual Reasons Thesis, the thesis that our perceptual reasons for our ordinary beliefs can be factive, but that factive reasons aren’t necessarily better reasons than subjectively indiscriminable non-factive reasons.