Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for August, 2011

CFP: Nineteenth International Workshop on Teaching Philosophy

Posted in CFP, Teaching, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2011| Leave a Comment »

ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The American Association of Philosophy Teachers

THE NINETEENTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP-CONFERENCE ON TEACHING
PHILOSOPHY
St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas
July 25 – July 29, 2012

Proposals for interactive workshops and panels related to teaching and
learning philosophy at any educational level are welcome.  We
especially encourage workshops and panels on the following topics:

•    innovative and successful teaching strategies
•    professional issues connected to teaching
•    how work in other disciplines can improve the teaching of
philosophy
•    engaging students outside the classroom
•    innovative uses of instructional technologies
•    the challenge of teaching in new settings
•    methods to improve student learning

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES (more…)

Read Full Post »

CFP: Psychology, Emotion, and the Human Sciences

Posted in CFP, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Psychology, Emotion, and the Human Sciences

A Symposium at the University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario Canada

20th to 21st of April, 2012.

Deadline for Submissions: 1 November 2011

In Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions [Cambridge, 1999], Jon Elster argues that “with an important subset of the emotions [for example, regret, relief, envy, malice, pity, indignation, …] we can learn more from moralists, novelists, and playwrights than from the cumulative findings of scientific psychology.”  Elster then explores the work of both ancient and early modern moral philosophers  in order to substantiate his argument.

This symposium will explore Elster’s assertions: what can contemporary ‘scientific psychology,’ barely 150 years old, teach us about the emotions that early modern literary and philosophical inquiry cannot?  Does psychology [of various sorts] deserve its status as the discipline of feeling?  What can contemporary philosophical work teach us about feeling and emotion? Are there viable ways of bringing historical and contemporary emotional inquiry into contact?  What insight can various forms of inquiry bring to the increasingly prominent issue of affective education [the education of emotions, dispositions, and values]?  What is the status of emotional inquiry across disciplines? (more…)

Read Full Post »

Point of Inquiry Interview with Hugo Mercier

Posted in Argumentation, Connections, Discussion, Teaching, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Rhetoricians will appreciate the presence of an attentive, if quadrupedal, audience in addition to the speakers.

An interesting phone interview with Hugo Mercier popped up today on Point of Inquiry, the blog for the Center for Inquiry.  The role of the confirmation bias, disagreement, and polarization are covered in this interesting discussion.  There are some very familiar themes here for argumentation theorists. It’s well worth a listen.  The clear and economical discussion of what can be complicated ideas here makes the podcast something potentially useful in advanced classes on reasoning too. The interview is about 40 minutes long. Click on the link below to listen.

Interview with Hugo Mercier

(Note: The file may take a moment to load depending upon your connection speed, so do be patient!)

 

Read Full Post »

International Colloquium: Argumentation in Political Deliberation

Posted in Announcements, Argumentation, Pragma-dialectics, Seminar/Workshop/Program Announcements, tagged , , , , , , on August 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

International Colloquium “Argumentation in Political Deliberation”
ArgLab – IFL
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa

2 September 2011

Political deliberation, understood as a public debate aimed at forming political opinions and deciding what course of action to take, has traditionally been seen as a prime venue for public reasoning and argument. Aristotle considered political deliberation – next to forensic dispute and public oratory – as one of the three main genres of rhetoric. Today, different modes of political deliberation – from formal institutional procedures in parliaments, to public hearings, to citizens’ conferences, to televised debates, to informal online discussions among “ordinary citizens” – are at the centre of interest in argumentation theory, deliberative theory of democracy, and communication and media studies alike.

The goal of this colloquium is to bring together scholars from these interrelated disciplines to examine the role, shape and quality of argumentation in political deliberation. A theoretical and empirical focus of the presentations and discussions will be on the practices of argumentation. The questions addressed include: How can we best theorize, analyze and evaluate argumentation in the context of political deliberation? What is the impact of the contextual conditions in different deliberative activities on the shape and quality of public argument? What are the typical forms of deliberative argument and counterargument? To what extent is the “virtual public sphere” transforming the way we engage in public argument? Does it allow for inclusive participation and genuine argumentative debate between advocates of various political views? By addressing these questions, the colloquium hopes to provide a focused account of the multifaceted argumentative practices in political deliberation.

The colloquium is part of a project Argumentation, Communication and Context sponsored by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT: PTDC/FIL–FIL/10117/2009) and carried out at ArgLab, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

For more information, visit the colloquium web page.

Read Full Post »

RAIL (Virtually) Gets Around

Posted in About RAIL, tagged , , , , on August 5, 2011| 2 Comments »

This is actually a pretty accurate representation of my mental picture of how these things work.

Just a quick update to let everyone know that I’ve done some things to make RAIL easier to follow on different platforms. I’ve set up a long-overdue Twitter account: @RAILBlog and I’ve created a Google Plus page you can follow as well.  The G+ page can be found under “RAIL Blog“–creative, yes?  Once I figure out how to do it I’ll get all these things all synced up for you all, but for the time being at least they now exist. 🙂

Read Full Post »