EDL 899: Doctoral Seminar: Other Web Resources

Although John Dewey lived in a markedly different era, many of his concerns are still highly relevant to life today. This program introduces students to his philosophy and his critical studies of education, the arts, and the implications of democracy for the lives of individuals and their communities. Contemporary examples of the influence of his work include film sequences of noted educator Deborah Meier's Mission Hill School in Roxbury, Massachusetts; commentary by literature authority Louise Rosenblatt on Dewey's theories of democratic behavior; and philosopher Larry Hickman's comments on the ways technology changes how one experiences the world.

The dialogues of Plato are analyzed in this program by world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Cambridge philosophy professor Myles Burnyeat. Seeing Plato's ideas initially as extensions of those of his teacher, Socrates, Burnyeat explains the development and content of Plato's original doctrines of knowledge as virtue, the immortality and tripartite division of the soul, and the theory of forms (ideas). Plato's political philosophy is discussed within the context of the notion of the ideal state-a political utopia ruled by philosopher-kings.

In this program, world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Columbia University professor Sidney Morgenbesser discuss the nuances of pragmatic philosophy as expressed by three of America's finest thinkers. Morgenbesser examines Peirce's theory of meaning and the concept of fallibilism that supports the changing nature of truth. James's concept of meaning, knowledge, and truth is examined within the context of the usefulness of particular conceptual schemes. The discussion of Dewey focuses on the human quest for warranted beliefs, and his philosophy of education - a bottom-up approach that bases instruction on a child's real problems and experiences.

World-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and contemporary philosopher Geoffrey Warnock discuss the philosophy of anti-empiricist Immanuel Kant, and his view that activities and powers within the mind are the key to knowledge, and that all knowledge is appearance. Knowledge, for Kant, is a complex affair, in which knowing is acquired not just through the senses, but through pure concepts of understanding indigenous to the mind.