[Vision2020] Health Education: A Conspiracy? A bit off the subject now though

Joe Campbell philosopher.joe at gmail.com
Fri Nov 26 19:45:20 PST 2010


Kenneth,

Like UI, WSU is exploring ways of developing various areas of applied
philosophy, especially bioethics, environmental ethics, and other
areas of applied ethics. Of course, in some ways logic and critical
thinking are applied epistemology and it is interesting, especially in
light of this discussion, that this area has less security in the
future of higher education in general. And I don't want to give the
idea that the Philosophy at WSU is in any danger. We'll find a way to
survive in the new academy.

My main point was that even if you take into account "lethargy and
laziness" and even narrow-mindedness, you are still going to have
disagreement about basic, core beliefs. If you think that classical
logic is only one option among many, then that just increases the
problem. There is even less chance for universal agreement in that
case, a greater chance that even if we start from the same assumptions
we might still end up with widely different core beliefs.

In a way, I agree very much with Ted. Most of us believe what we do
because of our social conditioning and our biology (my disagreement is
merely that this truth conflicts with our free will). Some of us spend
the time challenging our beliefs but even in that case few of us ever
try to challenge our core philosophical beliefs: our belief in God or
our atheism; our belief in free will or its denial; our belief that
knowledge is based on experience or that there are other sources; our
faith in science, or religion, or beauty. Some of us might have
challenged our core beliefs while we were young -- we believed in God
but now we don't -- yet we don't do it any longer since we "found the
truth." This is apolitical, as true of progressives as it is of
conservatives.

Are you familiar with the Duhem-Quine thesis? Roughly, it comprises
two claims: "(i) since empirical statements are interconnected, they
cannot be singly disconfirmed, and (ii), if we wish to hold a
particular statement true we can always adjust another statement"
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duhem/). You can see the
Duhem-Quine thesis in action when, as Ted notes, you witness otherwise
intelligent people doing intellectual summersaults to reject
scientific evidence about climate change or evolution theory. Why do
they go to such great lengths? Because these views are, according to
them, inconsistent with their core beliefs and they don't want to give
up their core beliefs. One can literally hold onto any single belief
provided he is willing to give up enough other beliefs, further from
the core. No amount of logic and critical thinking will prevent this.
People use critical thinking skills to save their core beliefs far
more often than they use critical thinking skills to challenge their
core beliefs.

But I'm no disillusioned fatalist. I take comfort in your last comment:

> Newton demonstrated that effort is necessary to overcome inertia, and that
> effort is what is required to get some of us out of the bag of chips, off the
> couch, and into more active, energetic, and educationally accomplishing lives.

I agree that we all can and should continually challenge ourselves and
our core beliefs; not necessarily change our core beliefs but
continually challenge them, continually ask ourselves whether we've
got it right. For even if we don't don't change them, we can learn to
accept and respect the core beliefs of others. That's progress! Not
conformity but acceptance. In fact, that is precisely the value that
theoretical philosophy, as opposed to practical philosophy, has to
offer. My main point in my initial post was that it takes much more
than logic and critical thinking to do this. People who fail to do it
are not necessarily lacking in critical thinking skills.

On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 12:28 PM, Kenneth Marcy <kmmos1 at frontier.com> wrote:
> On Friday 26 November 2010 07:31:18 Joe Campbell wrote:
>> <[snip]> ... but likely in the near future the MA program will be cut and
>> I'll have undergraduate "readers" instead. <[snip]>
>
> Even if the MA in Philosophy is shelved until better economic times return, I
> wonder whether there may be opportunity for applied philosophy efforts to keep
> the Philosophy Department reasonably intact. For example, undergraduate and
> graduate courses in business ethics for the business curricula, economic
> philosophy for the economics programs, and political philosophy for the
> political science and public administration programs. These traditional areas
> could (continue to) be augmented with environmental philosophy, and a newer
> look at educational philosophy.
>
> On the latter topic I wonder whether we ought not examine the plebeian
> assumption that personal educational responsibility to society ends when one
> is able to drop out of high school, and that personal efforts beyond that are
> optional. Perhaps a better notion is that there exists some basic minimum of
> expected educational achievement and ongoing competence that should be
> expected of all adult citizens throughout their lives. As the decades roll by,
> the contents of that minimum may change, and with those changes, citizens are
> then obligated to meet those new standards, preferably, perhaps, with at least
> some minimal assistance to do so. For discussion purposes, I take the minimum
> standard to be the current requirements for public high school graduation.
>
>> Also, I think it is a mistake to think that a lack of logic or critical
>> thinking skills is at fault. My own view is that the fault lies with the
>> increase in private education and isolationism
>
> While it may be the case that pedagogical pandering to bygone ages of frontier
> foraging and farming may attempt to evoke rugged individualism and libertarian
> license, observation of contemporary circumstances suggests explanations that
> require less conscious and coordinated effort to attain the status quo. Simple
> inertia against continuing personal educational work, lethargy and laziness,
> combined with  mindsets disinclined toward ideas and theory, and wanting to
> get on with the practical realities of life, keep the majority away from not
> only post-secondary education but from revisiting or reviewing what they
> should have learned, and should still remember, from their high school years.
>
>> but my guess is that most
>> private schools teach as much or more logic and critical thinking as they
>> do in public schools. Logic is analogous to computer hardware; even the
>> best is only as good as the input. As they say, "garbage in, garbage out"
>> but also quality in, quality out. What counts as garbage and what counts
>> as quality? That's where things get tricky.
>
> Well, sure. Must we require a two-value, forced-choice, true-false logic, or
> may we consider other logics without their middles excluded? Some sets of
> circumstances suggest that maybe or neither or don't know to be more
> appropriate answers than true or false.
>
> And, heretical as it may be to the core of Western logic, I wonder whether
> logic and its interactions through various linguistic pathways within the
> brains resident in various cultures may not have variations that are functions
> of the cultures within which it resides. Different logics in different cultures,
> however slight may be the differences, may result in different conclusions that,
> unexamined, lurk near the cores of some of our more intractable international
> discussions.
>
>> What counts as evidence? What
>> counts as sound reasoning? Some answers are easy: empirical findings,
>> classical logic, and mathematics. But that alone won't get you far.
>> Unfortunately, after that point we start doing philosophy, where
>> reasonable disagreement is par for the course. If the answers were easy,
>> we'd all agree. But we don't, so they're not.
>
> Not only are unresolved philosophical questions problematical, but so are the
> continually troubled communications, or lack thereof, between C.P. Snow's two
> cultures, the scientists and the aesthetes, the left and the right brained.
>
> Newton demonstrated that effort is necessary to overcome inertia, and that
> effort is what is required to get some of us out of the bag of chips, off the
> couch, and into more active, energetic, and educationally accomplishing lives.
>
>
> Ken
>
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