According to most contemporary treatments, our faculty of reason is itself devoid of a motive force. We defend the contrary Kantian position which claims that our faculty of rationality, our Will, comes with a motive force of its own. Our argument takes outset in the experience of reflective freedom as this has been discussed by Frankfurt, Watson, Velleman, and Sartre. We argue that each of their theories is unable to account for central features of our experience of reflective freedom. We show that only if we ascribe a substantive motive to our faculty of rationality can we overcome these problems.

To enhance multifaceted and critical reflection, we developed the Dual-Advocate Reflection Cards tool and carried out an empirical study. The eighteen student participants worked in pairs to reflect on their experiences. Transcripts of their discussions were analyzed, and we counted the frequency with which each card and each level of reflection intensity were discussed. The results indicated a strong link between card usage and utterances of multifaceted and critical reflection, as well as the effect of the cards on the reframing of the evaluation or understanding of the design process.

This paper examines reflective judgement as a crucial aspect of the power of judgement in Kant’s third Critique. Following Ginsborg’s normative-regulative interpretation, it demonstrates how aesthetics and teleology emerge from a single principle of reflection, which takes the form of contingent contingency, or possible lawfulness, in both. This reading establishes a parallel between common sense and the intuitive intellect, and allows one to preserve the normative dimension of Kant’s work while making Kant’s more speculative legacy continuous with it.

After presenting Boyle’s appeal to the Sartrean notion of nonpositional self-awareness in explaining Evans’ “transparency fact” concerning self-knowledge, I argue that his explanation suffers a certain instability. To the extent that nonpositional self-awareness is taken to be a matter of first-order ‘transparent’ orientation to the world, Boyle’s suggestion concerning the character of explicit positional self-knowledge is compromised. On the other hand, to the extent that nonpositional awareness is regarded as a form of genuine self-awareness, his explanation overintellectualizes first-order mental states. I conclude by raising questions regarding Boyle’s success in providing a viable alternative to epistemic accounts of basic self-knowledge.

I reply to three critical discussions of my book, Transparency and Reflection (Oxford, 2024). The replies discuss the basic structure of my “reflectivist” account of self-knowledge, the bearing of my account on the distinction between rational and nonrational minds, the question of how to respond to Hume’s challenge to our entitlement to attribute our thoughts to a single self, the relation between awareness of ourselves as conscious subjects and knowledge of our existence as embodied objects, and the relation of my views on self-awareness to the views of Immanuel Kant.

I give a brief overview of my book, Transparency and Reflection (Oxford 2024), to introduce the author-meets-critics symposium to follow.

As political polarization increases across many of the world's established democracies, many citizens are unwilling to appreciate and consider the viewpoints of those who disagree with them. Previous research shows that this lack of reflection can undermine democratic accountability. The purpose of this paper is to study whether empathy for the other can motivate people to reason reflectively about politics. Extant studies have largely studied trait‐level differences in the ability and inclination of individuals to engage in reflection. Most of these studies focus on observational moderators, which makes it difficult to make strong claims about the effects of being in a reflective state on political decision making. We extend this research by using a survey experiment with a large and heterogeneous sample of UK citizens (N = 2014) to investigate whether a simple empathy intervention can induce people to consider opposing viewpoints and incorporate those views in their opinion about a pressing political issue. We find that actively imagining the feelings and thoughts of someone one disagrees with prompts more reflection in the way that people reason about political issues as well as elicits empathic feelings of concern towards those with opposing viewpoints. We further examine whether empathy facilitates openness to attitude change in the counter‐attitudinal direction and find that exposure to an opposing perspective (without its empathy component) per se is enough to prompt attitude change. Our study paints a more nuanced picture of the relationship between empathy, reflection and policy attitudes.

Feedback practices have recently come under increasing scrutiny in British Universities, most notably because of the impact of the National Student Survey. This article draws on the work of a National Teaching Fellowship Scheme funded project (‘It's Good to Talk: Feedback, Dialogue and Learning’.) that seeks to identify, evaluate, develop and promote ways to improve feedback to students within the discipline of Politics. The article contends that student dissatisfaction with assignment feedback, coupled with increased pressures on teaching time, calls for a new approach to feedback delivery in the teaching of Politics. At the centre of this is the issue of encouraging lecturer and student dialogue around learning by developing peer feedback. This means moving away from a ‘transmission’ approach to feedback to techniques that involve discussion and reflection. In this article, we consider the literature on one approach by focusing on student-to-student peer feedback. Through an exploration of the literature, we argue that it offers an effective way to support student learning.

Are televised election debates (TEDs) a blessing for democracy, educating citizens and informing them of their electoral options? Or should they be viewed as a curse, presenting superficial, manipulating rhetoric in one-way communication? In this article, I evaluate TEDs from a deliberative point of view, focusing on the potential positive and negative outcomes of framing by politicians, as well as on the pros and cons of displaying emotions in debates. I argue that the use of these two rhetorical devices in TEDs is potentially helpful in inspiring deliberation, perspective-taking and subsequent reflection in both politicians and voters. This leads me to conclude that televised election debates should be critically approached as communicative venues with potential deliberative qualities.

Students of ‘conventional’ academic disciplines can struggle to determine the extent of their employability. Work-based modules offer a potential solution to this issue. That these type of modules give students the opportunity to apply their knowledge and realise the scope of possible employment opportunities afforded by their degree is commonly accepted, but real issues arise in tackling the assessment of ‘on the job’ experiential learning, particularly in the area of politics. This article outlines an integrated and iterative approach to assessment, starting with the design of the component parts of the module, moving on consider the role played by simple tools such as the framing of key narratives, the development of placement diaries incorporating SWOT analysis and the use of the Politics and International Relations Subject Benchmark Statement. The importance of integrating the module design with the final assessment processes is described, and some examples are offered of how students have described the ways in which the module has enabled them to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and scholarship and employability.

In Chapter 5 of Transparency and Reflection, Matthew Boyle examines an “anti-Egoist” challenge to my reflective knowledge that I am thinking, which says all I really know is that thinking is occurring. Boyle replies that I know something more, namely that a subject is thinking. Even so, he concedes that traditional Egoists like Descartes go too far in claiming reflective knowledge that an object is thinking. However, these comments argue that there is no stable middle ground between Cartesian Egoism and Anti-Egoism. If I know that I am thinking, then I know that an object is thinking.