Matt Ferkany | Michigan State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Matt Ferkany
Michigan State University Press eBooks, Dec 1, 2022
Ethical Perspectives, 2019
As in many other fields of practical ethics, virtue ethics is increasingly of interest within nur... more As in many other fields of practical ethics, virtue ethics is increasingly of interest within nursing ethics. Nevertheless, the virtue ethics literature in nursing ethics remains relatively small and underdeveloped. This article aims to categorize which broad theoretical approaches to virtue have been taken, to undertake some initial comparative assessment of their relative merits given the peculiar ethical dilemmas facing nurse practitioners, and to highlight the problem areas for virtue ethics in the nursing context. We find the most common approaches fall into care approaches grounded in sentimentalist or feminist ethics, eudaimonist approaches grounded in neo-Aristotelianism, and those grounded in MacIntyre’s practice theory. Our initial assessment is that the eudaimonist approach fares best in terms of merit and relative to criticisms of virtue ethics. But an outstanding issue concerns the motivational psychology of virtuous nursing and whether virtue ethical accounts of right ...
Episteme, Jul 10, 2023
In their "Educating for Intellectual Virtue: A Critique from Action Guidance" Kotzee, Carter and ... more In their "Educating for Intellectual Virtue: A Critique from Action Guidance" Kotzee, Carter and Siegel (2019) argue against what they call the intellectual virtues (IV) approach to the primary epistemic aim of education and in favor of what they call the critical thinking (CT) approach. The IV approach says that educating for intellectual virtue is the primary epistemic aim of education. The CT approach says that it is educating for critical thinking. They argue that the exemplarist/role-modeling pedagogy of the IV approach is not sufficiently action-guiding, because it does not teach students the know-how needed to think well. This they call the pedagogical challenge to the IV approach. We argue that their criticism of the IV approach fails. In general, possessing an intellectual virtue requires having a corresponding critical-thinking skill set. Also, for one to exercise critical-thinking skills well it is necessary that they possess dispositional components of corresponding intellectual virtues. Accordingly, intellectual virtues can be groomed in nonexemplarist ways that seem sufficiently action-guiding. Furthermore, the pedagogical challenge for the IV approach is a challenge for the CT approach as teaching for critical-thinking dispositions seems heavily reliant on an exemplarist pedagogy and so to this extent is non-action-guiding.
Informal Logic
How is intellectual virtue related to critical thinking? Can one be a critical thinker without ex... more How is intellectual virtue related to critical thinking? Can one be a critical thinker without exercising intellectual virtue? Can one be intellectually virtuous without thereby being a critical thinker? How should our answers to these questions inform the instruction of critical thinking? These were the questions informing the 2023 Charles McCracken endowed lectureships given at Michigan State University by Professors Harvey Siegel and Jason Baehr. This brief commentary introduces their respective papers, which appear in the current issue of Informal Logic.
for the learning of mathematics, 2017
Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Aug 31, 2022
Educational Theory, 2019
Epistemologists have long worried that the willingness of open-minded people to reconsider their ... more Epistemologists have long worried that the willingness of open-minded people to reconsider their beliefs in light of new evidence is both a condition of improving their beliefs and a risk factor for losing their grip on what they already know. In this paper I introduce and attempt to resolve a moral variation of this puzzle: A willingness to engage people having strange or (to us) repugnant moral ideals looks like a condition of broadening our moral horizons, but also a risk factor for doing the wrong thing or becoming bad. I pursue a contractualist line according to which such hazardous engagement is a virtue only when it matters to our interlocutors whether they can justify themselves to us on terms we can accept—and for our sake or for the sake of their own virtue, not instrumentally or to get something out of us. When it does not so matter, openness can be unintelligent or gullible, i.e. not virtuous.
Theory and Research in Education, 2018
Journal of Moral Education, 2018
In Aristotelian virtue theories, phronesis is foundational to being good, but to date accounts of... more In Aristotelian virtue theories, phronesis is foundational to being good, but to date accounts of how this particularly important virtue can emerge are sketchy. This article plumbs recent thinking in Aristotelian virtue ethics and developmental theorizing to explore how far its emergence can be understood developmentally, i.e., in terms of the growth in ordinary conditions of underlying psychological capacities, dispositions, and the like. The purpose is not to explicate Aristotle, nor to assimilate Aristotelian ideas to cognitive developmental moral theorizing, but to draw on both to build an independently plausible theory of practical intelligence and its development. It is argued that one fruitful direction attends to the psychology of virtues Aristotle associates with practical intelligence, including comprehension, understanding, sense, and cleverness, instead of Aristotle's remarks distinguishing fully virtuous persons from the continent, incontinent and the many.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2012
Subjective theories of wellbeing place authority concerning what benefits a person with that pers... more Subjective theories of wellbeing place authority concerning what benefits a person with that person herself, or limit wellbeing to psychological states. But how well off we are seems to depend on two different concerns, how well we are doing and how well things are going for us. I argue that two powerful subjective theories fail to adequately account for this and that principled arguments favoring subjectivism are unsound and poorly motivated. In the absence of more compelling evidence that how things go for us cannot directly constitute our wellbeing, I conclude that wellbeing is objective.
Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2014
Theory and Research in Education, 2013
Recently scholars have wondered whether liberals can promote mandatory programs of formal environ... more Recently scholars have wondered whether liberals can promote mandatory programs of formal environmental education, including education for the environment or sustainable development. Critics maintain that they cannot on grounds that environmental education is a threat to student autonomy or cannot be justified using liberal principles. We argue that the perceived conflict between liberalism and environmental education is exaggerated. Whatever the environmentalist ambitions of environmental education, any complete conception of it must prioritize education for skills and virtues that are consistent with students’ prospective autonomy. Liberalism is also compatible with meeting the demands of intergenerational justice, which arguably will include sustainability education if not other forms of environmental education. Finally, the skills and virtues future citizens need to manage today’s most pressing environmental problems are compatible both with those discussed in international stat...
Environmental Values, 2015
This paper assesses the charge that climate change denial is arrogant and considers the education... more This paper assesses the charge that climate change denial is arrogant and considers the educational priorities most appropriate to fostering greater humility about the climate change problem. I argue that even denial formed in ignorance of the organised misinformation campaign often constitutes a kind of arrogance, but that it is quite possible to humbly doubt the climate change problem. In some cases denial flows from other more or less serious errors or vices, such as ignorance, sincere but mistaken belief, dishonesty or selfishness. Those who press the arrogance charge also risk being arrogant in doing so. Educators can do a number of things to promote greater humility about climate change, including providing experiences that increase people's appreciation of their individual and general human limitations and improving their ability to distinguish credible from discreditable sources of scientific information and factual from normative dimensions of the climate change problem.
Should school teachers and administrators worry themselves much about the esteem childre... more Should school teachers and administrators worry themselves much about the esteem children have for themselves as persons, i.e. their 'global ' selfesteem (henceforth, just 'selfesteem')? In recent work on the subject, two authors have advanced an array of arguments maintaining that they need not at all (Kristjánsson, 2007) or not much (Smith, 2002, 2006). Some are consequentialist—efforts to foster selfesteem in the classroom, it is argued, conflict with the pursuit of other more important educational aims, such as academic achievement or character education (Smith, 2002). Others are more deontological—it is claimed that low selfesteem persons are not all 'head cases ' after all, in need of being cured ; rather, they can be lovable and perfectly successful (Smith, 2006). Another argument is conceptual: Selfesteem is supposedly not connected conceptually to the confidence, and thus the motivati...
Michigan State University Press eBooks, Dec 1, 2022
Ethical Perspectives, 2019
As in many other fields of practical ethics, virtue ethics is increasingly of interest within nur... more As in many other fields of practical ethics, virtue ethics is increasingly of interest within nursing ethics. Nevertheless, the virtue ethics literature in nursing ethics remains relatively small and underdeveloped. This article aims to categorize which broad theoretical approaches to virtue have been taken, to undertake some initial comparative assessment of their relative merits given the peculiar ethical dilemmas facing nurse practitioners, and to highlight the problem areas for virtue ethics in the nursing context. We find the most common approaches fall into care approaches grounded in sentimentalist or feminist ethics, eudaimonist approaches grounded in neo-Aristotelianism, and those grounded in MacIntyre’s practice theory. Our initial assessment is that the eudaimonist approach fares best in terms of merit and relative to criticisms of virtue ethics. But an outstanding issue concerns the motivational psychology of virtuous nursing and whether virtue ethical accounts of right ...
Episteme, Jul 10, 2023
In their "Educating for Intellectual Virtue: A Critique from Action Guidance" Kotzee, Carter and ... more In their "Educating for Intellectual Virtue: A Critique from Action Guidance" Kotzee, Carter and Siegel (2019) argue against what they call the intellectual virtues (IV) approach to the primary epistemic aim of education and in favor of what they call the critical thinking (CT) approach. The IV approach says that educating for intellectual virtue is the primary epistemic aim of education. The CT approach says that it is educating for critical thinking. They argue that the exemplarist/role-modeling pedagogy of the IV approach is not sufficiently action-guiding, because it does not teach students the know-how needed to think well. This they call the pedagogical challenge to the IV approach. We argue that their criticism of the IV approach fails. In general, possessing an intellectual virtue requires having a corresponding critical-thinking skill set. Also, for one to exercise critical-thinking skills well it is necessary that they possess dispositional components of corresponding intellectual virtues. Accordingly, intellectual virtues can be groomed in nonexemplarist ways that seem sufficiently action-guiding. Furthermore, the pedagogical challenge for the IV approach is a challenge for the CT approach as teaching for critical-thinking dispositions seems heavily reliant on an exemplarist pedagogy and so to this extent is non-action-guiding.
Informal Logic
How is intellectual virtue related to critical thinking? Can one be a critical thinker without ex... more How is intellectual virtue related to critical thinking? Can one be a critical thinker without exercising intellectual virtue? Can one be intellectually virtuous without thereby being a critical thinker? How should our answers to these questions inform the instruction of critical thinking? These were the questions informing the 2023 Charles McCracken endowed lectureships given at Michigan State University by Professors Harvey Siegel and Jason Baehr. This brief commentary introduces their respective papers, which appear in the current issue of Informal Logic.
for the learning of mathematics, 2017
Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Aug 31, 2022
Educational Theory, 2019
Epistemologists have long worried that the willingness of open-minded people to reconsider their ... more Epistemologists have long worried that the willingness of open-minded people to reconsider their beliefs in light of new evidence is both a condition of improving their beliefs and a risk factor for losing their grip on what they already know. In this paper I introduce and attempt to resolve a moral variation of this puzzle: A willingness to engage people having strange or (to us) repugnant moral ideals looks like a condition of broadening our moral horizons, but also a risk factor for doing the wrong thing or becoming bad. I pursue a contractualist line according to which such hazardous engagement is a virtue only when it matters to our interlocutors whether they can justify themselves to us on terms we can accept—and for our sake or for the sake of their own virtue, not instrumentally or to get something out of us. When it does not so matter, openness can be unintelligent or gullible, i.e. not virtuous.
Theory and Research in Education, 2018
Journal of Moral Education, 2018
In Aristotelian virtue theories, phronesis is foundational to being good, but to date accounts of... more In Aristotelian virtue theories, phronesis is foundational to being good, but to date accounts of how this particularly important virtue can emerge are sketchy. This article plumbs recent thinking in Aristotelian virtue ethics and developmental theorizing to explore how far its emergence can be understood developmentally, i.e., in terms of the growth in ordinary conditions of underlying psychological capacities, dispositions, and the like. The purpose is not to explicate Aristotle, nor to assimilate Aristotelian ideas to cognitive developmental moral theorizing, but to draw on both to build an independently plausible theory of practical intelligence and its development. It is argued that one fruitful direction attends to the psychology of virtues Aristotle associates with practical intelligence, including comprehension, understanding, sense, and cleverness, instead of Aristotle's remarks distinguishing fully virtuous persons from the continent, incontinent and the many.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2012
Subjective theories of wellbeing place authority concerning what benefits a person with that pers... more Subjective theories of wellbeing place authority concerning what benefits a person with that person herself, or limit wellbeing to psychological states. But how well off we are seems to depend on two different concerns, how well we are doing and how well things are going for us. I argue that two powerful subjective theories fail to adequately account for this and that principled arguments favoring subjectivism are unsound and poorly motivated. In the absence of more compelling evidence that how things go for us cannot directly constitute our wellbeing, I conclude that wellbeing is objective.
Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2014
Theory and Research in Education, 2013
Recently scholars have wondered whether liberals can promote mandatory programs of formal environ... more Recently scholars have wondered whether liberals can promote mandatory programs of formal environmental education, including education for the environment or sustainable development. Critics maintain that they cannot on grounds that environmental education is a threat to student autonomy or cannot be justified using liberal principles. We argue that the perceived conflict between liberalism and environmental education is exaggerated. Whatever the environmentalist ambitions of environmental education, any complete conception of it must prioritize education for skills and virtues that are consistent with students’ prospective autonomy. Liberalism is also compatible with meeting the demands of intergenerational justice, which arguably will include sustainability education if not other forms of environmental education. Finally, the skills and virtues future citizens need to manage today’s most pressing environmental problems are compatible both with those discussed in international stat...
Environmental Values, 2015
This paper assesses the charge that climate change denial is arrogant and considers the education... more This paper assesses the charge that climate change denial is arrogant and considers the educational priorities most appropriate to fostering greater humility about the climate change problem. I argue that even denial formed in ignorance of the organised misinformation campaign often constitutes a kind of arrogance, but that it is quite possible to humbly doubt the climate change problem. In some cases denial flows from other more or less serious errors or vices, such as ignorance, sincere but mistaken belief, dishonesty or selfishness. Those who press the arrogance charge also risk being arrogant in doing so. Educators can do a number of things to promote greater humility about climate change, including providing experiences that increase people's appreciation of their individual and general human limitations and improving their ability to distinguish credible from discreditable sources of scientific information and factual from normative dimensions of the climate change problem.
Should school teachers and administrators worry themselves much about the esteem childre... more Should school teachers and administrators worry themselves much about the esteem children have for themselves as persons, i.e. their 'global ' selfesteem (henceforth, just 'selfesteem')? In recent work on the subject, two authors have advanced an array of arguments maintaining that they need not at all (Kristjánsson, 2007) or not much (Smith, 2002, 2006). Some are consequentialist—efforts to foster selfesteem in the classroom, it is argued, conflict with the pursuit of other more important educational aims, such as academic achievement or character education (Smith, 2002). Others are more deontological—it is claimed that low selfesteem persons are not all 'head cases ' after all, in need of being cured ; rather, they can be lovable and perfectly successful (Smith, 2006). Another argument is conceptual: Selfesteem is supposedly not connected conceptually to the confidence, and thus the motivati...