Course Description In this course, we will explore the question of the actual and potential connections between democracy and education. Our focus of attention will be placed on a critical examination of democratic theory and its implications for the civic education roles and contributions of teachers, adult educators, community development practitioners, and community organizers. We will survey and deal critically with a range of competing conceptions of democracy, variously described as classical, republican, liberal, radical, marxist, neomarxist, pragmatist, feminist, populist, pluralist, postmodern, and/or participatory. Using narrative inquiry as a means for illuminating and interpreting contemporary practice, we will analyze the implications of different conceptions of democracy for the practical work of civic education.

Democracy and education.

Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Truth and method

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy

In a powerful series of texts Hilary Putnam has criticised what he takes to be a prevalent scientistic conception of objectivity in philosophy. This article is concerned with two connected facets of this critique, upon which Putnam himself has laid increasing emphasis: the attempt to reconstruct conceptions of ethical and political value in the wake of his criticism of "metaphysical realist" notions of objectivity, and his affiliation with the tradition of pragmatist philosophy. Four principal manifestations of Putnam's concern with ethical and political value are examined: the internalist argument for moral objectivity, the criticism of instrumental reason, the account of a "moral image", and the "reconsideration of Deweyan democracy". It is argued that an interpretation of Dewey's moral and political philosophy provides an illuminating vantage point from which to understand the shortcomings of Putnam's writings.

Putnam, Pragmatism and Democratic Theory

Afterword: Reassessing radicalism in a traditional society: two questions

In a powerful series of texts, Hilary Putnam has criticized what he takes to be a prevalent scientistic conception of objectivity in modern philosophy. This article is concerned with two connected facets of this critique, upon which Putnam himself has laid increasing emphasis: the attempt to reconstruct conceptions of ethical and political value in the wake of his criticism of “metaphysical realist” notions of objectivity, and his affiliation with the tradition of pragmatist philosophy. Four principal manifestations of Putnam's concern with ethical and political value are examined: the internalist argument for moral objectivity; the criticism of instrumental reason; the account of a “moral image”; and the “reconsideration of Deweyan democracy.” It is argued that an interpretation of Dewey's moral and political philosophy provides an illuminating vantage point from to understand the shortcomings of Putnam's ethical and political writings.

Putnam, Pragmatism, and Democratic Theory

In ‘Sceptical Democracy’, Vittorio Bufacchi offers a stimulating argument for a link between scepticism and liberal democracy (Bufacchi, 2001). Democracy is positioned between two extremes, each of which, he argues, embodies a mistaken doctrine about belief. The first is the belief in epistemic certainty, shared, he argues, among totalitarians, religious fundamentalists, and Alasdair MacIntyre. This aims ‘to ground society on infallible foundations’ (ibid., p. 23), and further believes that there exists an infallible epistemic route to those foundations. At the other pole is nihilism: in Bufacchi’s account, this consists in the claim that there can be no rational foundations for values, and is found in Nietzsche and J.-F. Lyotard. It is not part of this brief response to analyse Bufacchi’s interpretations of other philosophers, although it seems to me that any typology that puts MacIntyre’s moral philosophy in the same box as the Fuhrerprinzip is an exceedingly blunt instrument. Bufacchi rather intemperately describes both his dogmatists and nihilists as equally ‘cancerous’ threats to democracy, which has managed to carve out a space between them.

Fallible Democracy: Comment on Bufacchi

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fcpt.2009.42.pdf

Matthew Festenstein

Papers

Putnam, Pragmatism and Democratic Theory

Afterword: Reassessing radicalism in a traditional society: two questions

Putnam, Pragmatism, and Democratic Theory

Fallible Democracy: Comment on Bufacchi

A brief rejoinder to critics