Why aren't philosophers and educators speaking to each other?

Educational Theory

Volumn 52, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 1-11

  Arcilla, René Vincente ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0042711986     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2002.00001.x     Document Type: Article

References (12)

1. "We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it there out of the best materials." This is from Otto Neurath, "Protocol Sentences," trans. George Schick, in Logical Positivism, ed. A.J. Ayer (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959), 201.
2. John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: The Free Press, 1916). This book will be cited as DE in the text for all subsequent references.
3. A number of thinkers have observed that this kind of self-assessment is characteristic of in Must We Mean What We Say (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press enterprises undergoing a modernist revolution. See Stanley Cavell, "Foreword: An Audience for Philosophy," 1969.
4. Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," IN Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battock (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968).
5. Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Painting," In The New Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battock (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1966).
6. For more on the contrast between a pragmatist and a tragic worldview, see my "Tragic Absolutism in Education,"Educational Theory 42, Falla no. 4 1992), 473-81.
7. This contrast between a human relationship that is instrumental, and one that is dialogical, has been extensively developed by Jürgen Habermas, who derives from it the idea of communicative action. See, among other works, Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984).1.
8. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977).
9. John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, In The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 4, ed. Jo Ann Boydson (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1988).
10. Rorty's critique of epistemology is first worked out at length in Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). Although his views rapidly achieved prominence, a good gauge of the ongoing resistance to them may be found in the collection, Rorty and His Critics, ed. Robert B. Bramdom (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
11. I am quite aware that as the social sciences grew away from their parent discipline, they remained subject to periodic doubts about their scientificity. Some might argue that with a visibly thriving critical conversation today that includes hermeneutic, deconstructionist, and feminist critiques of positivism, let alone with the mounting respect given to qualitative studies of all stripes, the social sciences have neven been more philosophical. My reason for continuing to demur on this point is that I am not convinced that the above critiques constitute an engagement with skepticism, or that qualitative studies do not similarly require some pre-skeptical confidence in the possibility of knowledge. To be sure, one might reply that skepticism is patently irrelevant to such scientific efforts, and may even constitute a pretext for conservative inertia. That defensive reaction is just what interests me.
12. Richard Rorty, "The Dangers of Over-Philosophication - Reply to Arcilia and Nicholson," Educational Theory 40, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 41.