Robert Cowan – författare

Evaluation is ubiquitous. Indeed, it isn't an exaggeration to say that we assess actions, character, events, and objects as good, cruel, beautiful, etc., almost every day of our lives. Although evaluative judgement - for instance, judging that an institution is unjust - is usually regarded as the paradigm of evaluation, it has been thought by some philosophers that a distinctive and significant kind of evaluation is perceptual. For example, in aesthetics, some have claimed that adequate aesthetic judgement must be grounded in the appreciator's first hand-hand perceptual experience of the item judged. In ethics, reference to the existence and importance of something like ethical perception is found in a number of traditions, for example, in virtue ethics and sentimentalism. This volume brings together philosophers working in aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind, and value theory to investigate what we call 'evaluative perception'. Specifically, they engage with (1) Questions regarding the existence and nature of evaluative perception: Are there perceptual experiences of values? If so, what is their nature? Are perceptual experiences of values sui generis? Are values necessary for certain kinds of perceptual experience? (2) Questions about epistemology: Can evaluative perceptual experiences ever justify evaluative judgements? Are perceptual experiences of values necessary for certain kinds of justified evaluative judgements? (3) Questions about value theory: Is the existence of evaluative perceptual experience supported or undermined by particular views in value theory? Are particular views in value theory supported or undermined by the existence of evaluative perceptual experience?

We are frequently confronted with arguments. Arguments are attempts to persuade us – to influence our beliefs and actions – by giving us reasons to believe this or that. Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide will equip students with the concepts and techniques used in the identification, analysis and assessment of arguments whatever the subject matter or context. Through precise and accessible discussion, this book provides the tools to become a successful critical thinker, one who can act and believe in accordance with good reasons, and who can articulate and make explicit those reasons.Key topics discussed include: Core concepts in argumentationHow language can serve to obscure or conceal the real content of arguments How to distinguish argumentation from rhetoricHow to avoid common confusions surrounding words such as ‘truth’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘opinion’How to identify and evaluate the most common types of argumentHow to distinguish good reasoning from bad in terms of deductive validity and induction.This fifth edition has been revised and extensively updated throughout, including a significantly expanded range of ‘complete examples’, the introduction of Venn diagrams and the discussion of fake news and related phenomena arising in the contemporary scene. The dynamic Routledge Critical Thinking companion website provides thoroughly updated resources for both instructors and students, including new examples and case studies, flashcards, sample questions, practice questions and answers, student activities and a testbank of questions for use in the classroom. Visit www.routledge.com/cw/bowell.

We are frequently confronted with arguments. Arguments are attempts to persuade us – to influence our beliefs and actions – by giving us reasons to believe this or that. Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide will equip students with the concepts and techniques used in the identification, analysis and assessment of arguments whatever the subject matter or context. Through precise and accessible discussion, this book provides the tools to become a successful critical thinker, one who can act and believe in accordance with good reasons, and who can articulate and make explicit those reasons.Key topics discussed include: Core concepts in argumentationHow language can serve to obscure or conceal the real content of arguments How to distinguish argumentation from rhetoricHow to avoid common confusions surrounding words such as ‘truth’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘opinion’How to identify and evaluate the most common types of argumentHow to distinguish good reasoning from bad in terms of deductive validity and induction.This fifth edition has been revised and extensively updated throughout, including a significantly expanded range of ‘complete examples’, the introduction of Venn diagrams and the discussion of fake news and related phenomena arising in the contemporary scene. The dynamic Routledge Critical Thinking companion website provides thoroughly updated resources for both instructors and students, including new examples and case studies, flashcards, sample questions, practice questions and answers, student activities and a testbank of questions for use in the classroom. Visit www.routledge.com/cw/bowell.

Teaching Double Negatives: Disadvantage and Dissent at Community College asks whether exploring narratives that subvert dominant Western paradigms of progress in classrooms enables students to re-narrate and represent their lives. In seven years of teaching literature and philosophy at Brooklyn’s only community college, Robert Cowan worked with many kinds of disadvantaged students—those on welfare or homeless, single moms and the formerly incarcerated, traumatized war veterans, and immigrants from over 140 countries. These students had many reasons for wanting to dissent from the social norms that sought to define and marginalize them. One might imagine that disadvantaged students would identify with texts that are subversive, challenge dominant race/class/gender paradigms, and try to interrogate the globalized systems in which we live. But do they? Do the philosophies of Debord and Heidegger, the novels of Christa Wolf and Jean Genet, contemporary slave narratives and Dead Kennedys lyrics, poetry by Aimé Césiare and Taliban fighters, actually speak to them? Can you teach dissent to the disadvantaged and produce a positive result? Teaching Double Negatives explores the responses of students to texts from a variety of traditions and time-periods within the context of overarching theoretical debates about counter-enlightenment, globalization, multiculturalism, identification, recognition, and critical pedagogy. Teaching Double Negatives is an insightful collection that problematizes the assumptions of instructors and powerfully engages the intersectionality of students, appealing to readers across the educational spectrum.

Teaching Double Negatives: Disadvantage and Dissent at Community College asks whether exploring narratives that subvert dominant Western paradigms of progress in classrooms enables students to re-narrate and represent their lives. In seven years of teaching literature and philosophy at Brooklyn’s only community college, Robert Cowan worked with many kinds of disadvantaged students—those on welfare or homeless, single moms and the formerly incarcerated, traumatized war veterans, and immigrants from over 140 countries. These students had many reasons for wanting to dissent from the social norms that sought to define and marginalize them. One might imagine that disadvantaged students would identify with texts that are subversive, challenge dominant race/class/gender paradigms, and try to interrogate the globalized systems in which we live. But do they? Do the philosophies of Debord and Heidegger, the novels of Christa Wolf and Jean Genet, contemporary slave narratives and Dead Kennedys lyrics, poetry by Aimé Césiare and Taliban fighters, actually speak to them? Can you teach dissent to the disadvantaged and produce a positive result? Teaching Double Negatives explores the responses of students to texts from a variety of traditions and time-periods within the context of overarching theoretical debates about counter-enlightenment, globalization, multiculturalism, identification, recognition, and critical pedagogy. Teaching Double Negatives is an insightful collection that problematizes the assumptions of instructors and powerfully engages the intersectionality of students, appealing to readers across the educational spectrum.

We live in an era of global anxiety – about rising nationalism, civil and human rights struggles, the ramifications of declining white male hegemony, about driving ourselves and other species toward extinction. So it’s no surprise that we also seek transcendence of our material circumstances. But exploring the possibilities of transcendence of our materiality – whether through religion, philosophy, psychology, or literature – is not a new feature of thought, art, or action. This book explores approaches to the immanence-transcendence problem in works of French, German, Italian, and Russian literature and philosophy between 1762 and 2016, in an effort to understand how different thinkers have approached this dynamic. The volume is divided into four "suppression" approaches and four "infliction" approaches, sometimes combining sympathetic source material from different centuries and countries that take complementary stances. While this book takes a skeptical approach as to whether a person can experience sensory comprehension of transcendence of his or her own embodiment, we are clearly in need of literature that provides guidance for our current sociological and psychological circumstances in an effort to help us navigate our global future.

This volume explores the importance of scholarly and literary communities, the challenges of translation and difference, and the search for the ineffable in art. It is a collection of interviews, translations, scholarly essays, and tributes in honor of Burton Pike (1930–2022), a renowned translator of Robert Musil, Rilke, Goethe, Gerhard Meier, and others, as well as a scholar of literary Modernism and the image of the city. He was also an extraordinary teacher, mentor, and inspiration to a generation. The pieces are mostly written by former students, colleagues, and admiring friends, but the book also includes two interviews with Pike, along with Pike’s own previously unpublished lecture on Thomas Mann’s last novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man.

This comprehensive, practical title invites all clinicians to take a fresh look at the evaluation and management of chronic daily headache (CDH). Developed by a distinguished international panel of experts, the book examines key social and economic issues around CDH and clarifies the diagnosis of CDH disorders, providing an understanding of the underlying biological substrates, offering guidance on the use of diagnostic testing and additional consultations, and outlining treatment strategies with the greatest potential to alleviate the burden of these patients and to provide the highest quality of care.  The book fully examines the constellation of symptoms that constitute chronic daily headache, while also discussing the role of behavioral medicine and the important elements involved in taking a good history.  The major forms and biology of chronic daily headache are covered, as is the role of diagnostic testing and treatment.  The risk factors that lead patients to transform episodic primary headache disorders into the chronic form are examined.  Invasive and neuromodulatory techniques are also discussed. A section on the classification of these disorders rounds out this important contribution to the literature.  Chronic Headache – A Comprehensive Guide to Evaluation and Management will be of great interest to neurologists, primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, medical students, and other clinicians with an interest in chronic daily headache.