Harvey Siegel is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami, Coral Gables FL. He is the author of five books, most recently Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation and Teaching Thinking Skills. In addition, he has edited two books, including the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education. He works mainly in epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of education.

• Table of Contents


• Preface and Acknowledgements


• Introduction


• Part I. Recent Statements and Developments of the Theory


• 1. Cultivating Reason


• 2. Education As Initiation into the Space of Reasons


• 3. Neither Humean Nor (Fully) Kantian Be


• Part II. Dispositions, Virtues, and Indoctrination


• 4. What (Good) Are Thinking Dispositions?


• 5. 'You Take the Wheel, I'm Tired of Driving; Jesus, Show Me the Way': Doctrines, Indoctrination, and the Suppression of Critical Dispositions


• 6. The Role of Reasons in Moral Education


• 7. Critical Thinking and the Intellectual Virtues


• 8. Open-Mindedness, Critical Thinking, and Indoctrination


• Part III. Values, Rationality, and the Value of Rationality


• 9. Is 'Education' a Thick Epistemic Concept?


• 10. Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust: Alvin Goldman on Epistemology and


• Education


• 11. Rationality and Judgment


• 12. Too Much Epistemology? A Response to a Heideggerian Reconceptualizing of Critical Thinking


• Part IV. Rationality and Cultural Diversity




• 13. Multiculturalism and the Possibility of Transcultural Educational and Philosophical Ideals


• 14. Argument Quality and Cultural Difference


• 15. Multiculturalism and Rationality


• 16. Epistemological Diversity and Educational Research: Much Ado about Nothing Much?


• 17. How Should We Educate Students Whose Cultures Frown upon Rational Disputation?: Cultural Difference and the Role of Reason in Multicultural Democratic Education

Education's Epistemology extends and defends Siegel's "reasons conception" of critical thinking, developing it in both philosophical and educational directions. Of particular note is its emphasis on epistemic quality and epistemic rationality and its concerted defense of "universal" educational and philosophical ideals in the face of multicultural, postmodern, and other challenges.