The Formation of Reason Journal of Philosophy of Education Series

In The Formation of Reason, philosophy professor David Bakhurst utilizes ideas from philosopher John McDowell to develop and defend a socio-historical account of the human mind.

• Provides the first detailed examination of the relevance of John McDowell's work to the Philosophy of Education
• Draws on a wide-range of philosophical sources, including the work of 'analytic' philosophers Donald Davidson, Ian Hacking, Peter Strawson, David Wiggins, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
• Considers non-traditional ideas from Russian philosophy and psychology, represented by Ilyenkov and Vygotsky
• Discusses foundational philosophical ideas in a way that reveals their relevance to educational theory and practice
  

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Author’s Preface

1. What Can Philosophy Tell Us About How History Made the Mind?

What Role for Philosophy?

Wittgenstein and Davidson

Wittgenstein and Davidson Contrasted

McDowell

The Idea of Bildung

Understanding the Bildungsprozess

The Conceptual and the Practical

Conclusion

2. Social Constructionism

Social Constructionism Introduced

The Social Construction of Reality

Why Bother About Global Constructionism?

Against Global Constructionism

Matters Political

The Social Construction of Mental States

Why Mental States Are Not Socially Constructed

The Social Construction of Psychological Categories

Conclusion

3. Self and Other

Problems of Self and Other

The Problem of Self and Other in One’s Own Person

Strawson on Persons

Wiggins on Persons and Human Nature

The Significance of Second Nature

Further Positives

Conclusion: Two Cautionary Notes

4. Freedom, Reflection and the Sources of Normativity

McDowell on Judgement

Owens’s Critique

Defending Intellectual Freedom

Freedom and the Sources of Normativity

Sources of Normativity I: Practical Reasoning

Sources of Normativity II: Theoretical Reasoning

A McDowellian Response

Conclusion

5. Exploring the Space of Reasons

McDowell on the Space of Reasons

Brandom’sInferentialism

Ilyenkov on the Ideal

Conclusion

6. Reason and Its Limits: Music, Mood and Education

An Initial Response

The Challenge Reconfigured

Passivity Within Spontaneity

Mood

Mood, Salience and Shape

Music

Education

Conclusion

7. Education Makes Us What We Are

A Residual Individualism

Vygotsky’s Legacy

Reconciling Vygotsky and McDowell

Personalism

Final Thoughts on Education

References

Index

David Bakhurst is the John and Ella G. Charlton Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. He is the author of Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy (1991) and co-editor (with Christine Sypnowich) of The Social Self (1995) and (with Stuart Shanker) of Jerome Bruner: Language, Culture, Self (2001).