2014 Inaugural EPiC Research Group Meeting

Dear Queens Philosophy Graduate Students,

We are writing to tell you about a new research group in the department: Education, Philosophy and Conversation, and to invite you to this year’s inaugural EPiC meeting.

EPiC is a research group that meets regularly to discuss philosophical topics on education and conversation, broadly conceived. Questions addressed may include, but are not limited to:

• Is there a distinctly ethical value to education? If so, what is it? In what ways do educational practices, policies, or technologies promote or hinder this value?
• What is teachable? Can critical thinking be taught? Creativity? What implications do differences between knowing how and knowing that, or skill and knack have for educational practices?
• What sense can be made of education as initiation into conversation, practice, history, culture, or the space of reasons? How might this contribute to understanding education’s importance?
• What lessons do Aristotle’s account of moral education have for education more broadly?

Discussions center on a relevant article, a work in progress, or sometimes just a topic or question people are interested in thinking through. Attending these meetings is an opportunity to learn about and discuss current research in the field, and offers the chance to contribute to such scholarship. As EPiC develops, we aim to host workshops, and to build a network for scholars working in this area.

 

We are meeting this Friday, the 12th, from 1:30-3:00 P.M., and are inviting anyone interested to join us. The room is to be announced. David Bakhurst will be presenting an excerpt from a chapter draft on responsiveness to reasons. What we understand reasons to be, and how we conceive of responsiveness to reasons, shapes how we understand conversation as involving giving and accepting reasons, or education as a practice by which humans become responsive to reasons. In this way, the focus on responsiveness to reasons promises to be illuminating of issues in philosophy of education more general. 

 

We hope you will join the discussion. If you have any questions or concerns regarding EPiC, please direct them to the project coordinator, Michael Vossen.