Volume 10, Issue 4 (2-2025)
فصلنامه تحقیقات بنیادین علوم انسانی 2025, 10(4): 74-74 |
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ghaedi Y, Rezazadeh H R, Ghaffarian J. Beyond the Logical Machine: Reconceptualizing Agency and Consciousness in Philosophy for Children. فصلنامه تحقیقات بنیادین علوم انسانی 2025; 10 (4) :74-74
URL: http://frh.sccsr.ac.ir/article-1-672-en.html
URL: http://frh.sccsr.ac.ir/article-1-672-en.html
Abstract: (50 Views)
In its classical interpretations, the Philosophy for Children (P4C) program has primarily emphasized the development of formal reasoning skills—an approach that implicitly reduces the child’s mind to an information‑processing system. However, emerging paradigms in the philosophy of mind and the neuroscience of volition highlight the urgent need to reconsider these ontological foundations. Employing an analytical–inferential method, this study examines the ontological validity of phenomenal consciousness and its role in the causal authority of the subject. The central argument is that thinking within the community of inquiry is not merely an algorithmic process but rather the manifestation of the subject’s agency in the face of biological constraints and environmental stimuli. The findings suggest that first‑person consciousness functions as a higher‑level constraint that, through the mechanism of downward causation, reorganizes lower‑level neural activities. Drawing on insights from contemporary philosophy of mind, the study demonstrates how P4C, by introducing a pause in automatic responses, evolves from a logical exercise into a technology for the enhancement of agency—a process through which the subject gains the space necessary to evaluate and construct a narrative identity. This reconceptualization underscores that logical thinking in children is not a mechanical output but a volitional act aimed at overcoming biological inertia and biological determinism while reconstructing subjectivity.
Keywords: Philosophy for Children (P4C), Phenomenal Consciousness, Downward Causation, Free Will (Veto), Narrative Identity, Ontological Validity.
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