Towards a philosophy of academic publishing.Michael A. Peters,Petar Jandrić,Ruth Irwin,Kirsten Locke,Nesta Devine,Richard Heraud,Andrew Gibbons,Tina Besley,Jayne White,Daniella Forster,Liz Jackson,Elizabeth Grierson,Carl Mika,Georgina Stewart,Marek Tesar,Susanne Brighouse,Sonja Arndt,George Lazaroiu,Ramona Mihaila,Catherine Legg &Leon Benade -2016 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 48 (14):1401-1425.detailsThis article is concerned with developing a philosophical approach to a number of significant changes to academic publishing, and specifically the global journal knowledge system wrought by a range of new digital technologies that herald the third age of the journal as an electronic, interactive and mixed-media form of scientific communication. The paper emerges from an Editors' Collective, a small New Zealand-based organisation comprised of editors and reviewers of academic journals mostly in the fields of education and philosophy. The paper (...) is the result of a collective writing process. (shrink)
Heidegger and Stiegler on failure and technology.Ruth Irwin -2020 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 52 (4):361-375.detailsHeidegger argues that modern technology is quantifiably different from all earlier periods because of a shift in ethos from in situ craftwork to globalised production and storage at the behest of consumerism. He argues that this shift in technology has fundamentally shaped our epistemology, and it is almost impossible to comprehend anything outside the technological enframing of knowledge. The exception is when something breaks down, and the fault ‘shows up’ in fresh ways. Stiegler has several important addendums to Heidegger’s thesis. (...) Firstly, that Heidegger fails to fully appreciate the early Greek myth of Prometheus, and the technological depth that fire offers all human societies. Secondly, the fall, or failure, which is doubled in the myth of Prometheus, and shows up in epistemology accordingly. Thirdly the acceleration of technology since the onset of Information Technology, and the way this is disorientating our Being. I argue the fall in both Heidegger and early Stiegler has encaptured their imagination. In later work, Stiegler argues that acceleration is fused with algorithmic pretensions, that are distorting and undermining the creative political imaginary, and making it difficult to revalue the values that underpin the nihilist Anthropocene. The overcoming of the Anthropocene engages politics, economics, power, physics, and ecology. (shrink)
Climate change and education.Ruth Irwin -2019 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 52 (5):492-507.detailsUnderstanding climate change is becoming an urgent requirement for those in education. The normative values of education have long been closely aligned with the global, modernised world. The industrial model has underpinned the hidden and overt curriculum. Increasingly though, a new eco-centric orientation to economics, technology, and social organisation is beginning to shape up the post-carbon world. Unless education is up to date with the issues of climate change, the estate of education will be unable to meet its task of (...) knowledge transfer. This paper covers the basic science and ethical policy debates, and begins to outline the questions that will necessarily entangle education as we orientate ourselves to the new world that is upon us. (shrink)
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Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change: Risking It All.Ruth Irwin -2008 - New York: Continuum.detailsGlobalization -- Globalization and the environment -- Climate change and the crisis of philosophy -- Social conscience and global market -- Categories, environmental indicators, and the enlightenment market -- Environmentalism -- Pessimistic realism and optimistic total management -- Population statistics and modern governmentality -- Pragmatism -- Technological enframing -- Heidegger, the origin and the finitude of civilization -- Technology and the kultur of late modernity -- Embodied subjectivity and the critique of modernity.
Autonomy, agency and education: He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.Nesta Devine &Ruth Irwin -2005 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 37 (3):317–331.detailsIn this paper the authors take up James Marshall's work on the individual and autonomy. Their suggestion is that although the liberal notion of the autonomous individual might give us a standard of reference for the freedom of persons, the liberal tradition also circumscribes that freedom by prescribing it both as an attribute of persons and as a necessity for persons to exercise, in the form of choice, even though the range of choice is in fact limited. Starting from an (...) account of James Marshall and Colin Lankshear's respective work on the nature of the individual, and using Heidegger, Nietzsche, Merleau‐Ponty and others, they reintegrate the individual into society as it were, and finally, search for means of escape from the determinism of ‘governmentality’. Drawing on notions such as ‘technologies of the self’, hysteria and excess, integration of body and mind, individual and environment, subject and object, they describe the difficult, hesitant work of bringing existing parameters of thought and behaviour into consciousness. Some consequences for the relations of teachers and students within the school context are suggested. (shrink)
Economics, ecology, and a new eco-social settlement informing education.Ruth Irwin -2019 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 52 (8):834-834.detailsVolume 52, Issue 8, July 2020, Page 834-834.
Stiegler and Butler on AI and the evolution of intelligence.Ruth Irwin -2025 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 57 (5):473-488.detailsEducation is concerned with the production of intelligence. Is AI intelligent? and what are the implications for educating humanity? Samuel Butler makes the case that machinery emerges in co-relation with the evolution of humanity. In other words, the evolution of machines relies on the human intervention for reproduction, and the evolution of human epistemology is shaped by the emergence of machines. Pre-empting themes of posthumanism over 150 years ago, Butler teases out the notion of intelligence in the evolution and communication (...) of plants, animals, and machines. Stiegler worries that the rapid acceleration of automation, especially the emergence of the algorithms of artificial intelligence are disrupting the modern economic system by rupturing the relation between work and wages. Escalating entropy is overtaking the ordering of modernity. Education needs to engage with the contextual changes in modern expectations about work, as well as educational changes in thinking and learning. (shrink)
Heidegger and Nietzsche; the Question of Value and Nihilism in relation to Education.Ruth Irwin -2003 -Studies in Philosophy and Education 22 (3/4):227-244.detailsThis paper is a philosophical analysis ofHeidegger and Nietzsche's approach tometaphysics and the associated problem ofnihilism. Heidegger sums up the history ofWestern metaphysics in a way which challengescommon sense approaches to values education.Through close attention to language, Heideggerargues that Nietzsche inverts thePlatonic-Christian tradition but retains theanthropocentric imposition of âvaluesâ. Ihave used Nietzsche's theory to suggest aslightly different definition of metaphysicsand nihilism which draws attention to theontological parameters of human truths as astruggle between competing sets of conflictingor contradictory values (perspectives) thatopens (...) space for rethinking and re-educatinghuman possibilities. How this openness willshow up in educational theory and practice isonly beginning to be evoked. The twophilosophers indicate an approach to issues ofmorality, decision making and knowledgeproduction which may surprise and disconcerttraditional views. As the forefathers ofpost-structuralist thinking, Nietzsche andHeidegger offer a critique of Humanism whileretaining the Renaissance tradition ofpositioning education as the well spring ofvalues in society. It is through the generationof new knowledges, the development of critiqueand the nurturing of character that societyreformulates itself in relation to the earth.The ethical evaluation of these new forms ofknowledge is crucial to the creative and caringregeneration of the human environment, asopposed to the corrosive adoption ofconsumerism and usury. (shrink)
Negentropy for the anthropocene; Stiegler, Maori and exosomatic memory.Ruth Irwin &Te Haumoana White -2022 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 54 (5):532-544.detailsExosomatic memory is a crucial phase in the evolution of humanity because it enables learning to take place across groups and generations rather than exclusively through lived experience or one on one transmission. Exosomatic memory is the attribution of knowledge to objects, such as art or writing, which allows epistemology to be transmitted beyond the individual to subsequent generations of people. Exosomatic memory is the key to the transmission of culture and knowledge, beyond the individual who learns exclusively from personal (...) experience. This places technologies such as writing and art in a key position for the education of culture and knowledge. Stiegler develops these ideas, following Martin Heidegger, Leroi-Gourhan and Derrida from the Palaeolithic to the contemporary.Maori use of natural objects as exosomatic transmission of intergenerational learning exceeds the technological enframing of modernity outlined by Heidegger. For indigenous peoples, exosomatic memory is cultural, technological and ecological.Stiegler argues that the impact of cybernetics on knowledge production is accelerating the technological enframing of knowledge (2018). Consequently, information technologies are leaving the human mind behind, in passive receptivity rather than dynamic creativity. The prefrontal cortex is slower than the internet, exacerbating a widening lag in active understanding, in favour of passive absorption. Alienation and epistemological entropy are trapping us in climate change and the anthropocentric Capitalocene. Maori insight may cut the Gordian knot and sidestep the alienation and determinism of technological modernity. (shrink)
Collective obituary for James D. Marshall (1937–2021).Michael Peters,Colin Lankshear,Lynda Stone,Paul Smeyers,Linda Tuhiwai Smith,Roger Dale,Graham Hingangaroa Smith,Nesta Devine,Robert Shaw,Bruce Haynes,Denis Philips,Kevin Harris,Marc Depaepe,David Aspin,Richard Smith,Hugh Lauder,Mark Olssen,Nicholas C. Burbules,Peter Roberts,Susan L. Robertson,Ruth Irwin,Susanne Brighouse &Tina Besley -2021 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 54 (4):331-349.detailsMichael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...
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Engaging and developing community in digital spaces: Approaches from the Editorial Development Group.Onur Karamercan,Jacoba Matapo,Olivera Kamenarac,David Taufui Mikato Fa’Avae,Sonja Arndt,Ruth Irwin,Frans Kruger,Carl Mika,Mahaman Yaou Abdoul Bassidou,Marek Tesar &Pablo Del Monte -2023 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 55 (7):760-772.detailsDespite the reservations of many, digital spaces are useful and are here to stay. Most of us have witnessed that usefulness in action over the last two years, since the outbreak of COVID-19, and ma...
Rethinking Economics and Education: Exponential Growth and Post‐Growth Strategies.Ruth Irwin -2017 -Educational Theory 67 (4):379-398.detailsEducation is increasingly vocational and structured to serve the ongoing exponential increase in economic growth. Climate change is an outcome of these same economic values and praxes. Attempts to shift these values and our approach to technology are continually absorbed and overcome by the pressing motif of economic growth. In this article, Ruth Irwin uses Martin Heidegger's concept of the technological enframing of modernity to view economic growth. John Maynard Keynes's notion of economic growth has impacted the pace of consumerism (...) that now permeates every aspect of knowing about the world we live in. Irwin asks us to think through technological enframing anew by looking to an early mechanical Greek artifact, the Antikythera mechanism, which depicts a cyclical notion of time used by ancient cultures to define the rhythm of economic productivity. The earth-centric cosmos embodied by this mechanism helped the Mesopotamian economy stay within the parameters of the local ecology and demonstrates that cyclical economic growth may enable a civilization to maintain a steady state over time and survive for millennia. An earth-centric cosmology creates a different set of values, one that emphasizes the need to regulate the pace of consumerism rather than allowing it free rein “as by an Invisible Hand.” The role of education in this exploration is twofold: first, it is a pivotal site for cultural exploration and transformation; and second, the expectations of the state strictly limit the forms education can take, so that as long as promoting economic growth defines state expectations, education will remain subservient to these values. If we aim to overcome climate change, Irwin concludes, we need to transform the expectations for education from society as well as from teachers. (shrink)