Education

Flower City Philosophy

August 15, 2007

Education

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The root of the word education is the Latin verb educere, which means to lead forth or bring out. This implies a particular conception of education, one aimed at calling something forward from a person. In the tradition – begun by the Greeks – of the liberal arts, it is nothing less than the fullest human potential that education must bring forward. The following passages, from Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind, speak to this idea.

“The teacher…must constantly try to look toward the goal of human completeness and back at the natures of his students here and now, ever seeking to understand the former and to assess the capacities of the latter to approach it. Attention to the young, knowing what their hungers are and what they can digest, is the essence of the craft.”

“The teacher’s standpoint is not arbitrary. It is neither simply dependent on what students think they want or happen to be in this place or time, nor is it imposed on him by the demands of a particular society or the vagaries of the market. Although much effort has been expended in trying to prove that the teacher is always the agent of such forces, in fact he is, willy-nilly, guided by the awareness, or the divination, that there is a human nature, and that assisting its fulfillment is his task. He does not come to this by way of abstractions or complicated reasoning. He sees it in the eyes of his students. Those students are only potential, but potential points beyond itself; and this is the source of hope, almost always disappointed but ever renascent, that man is not just a creature of accident, chained to and formed by the particular cave in which he is born.”

To be sure, this is a humanistic view of education. It has often come under fire from critics who charge that it has little practical value to society. Such critics contend that the proper mission of education is to prepare people for their roles in society. To this end, education should train students in the practices that will be useful to them as citizens and workers. In a time when the global economy brings stiff competition from Chinese, Indian or German workers, many view education as nothing less than a matter of national security. Such views have given rise to federal policies such as the American Competitiveness Initiative, which provides additional need-based scholarships for 3^rd and 4^th year college students “who choose to major in math, science, engineering, or critical foreign languages.” The Congress has also earmarked considerable funds for training additional math and science teachers, expanding AP and IB math and science offerings in low-income schools, and recruiting professionals in math and science-related fields to serve as an “Adjunct Teacher Corps.”

Is there room for both of these conceptions of education, or are they incompatible with each other? In a time of tradeoffs, what ought to be educational priorities?

Understanding Each Other

Flower City Philosophy

July 18, 2007

Understanding Each Other

The word “understand” derives form the Old English understandan, which means, literally, to stand in the midst of or stand between. This becomes a little clearer to our modern minds when we learn that the prefix “-under” originally meant among.

Thinking about the early meaning of the term “understanding” points us toward defining it in terms of empathy. If understanding requires standing among something, then understanding another person must require standing among her thoughts and assuming, in effect, her point of view.

Is this true? Does fundamental understanding require us to somehow suspend our own point of view and stand in the midst of the point of view of another? Let’s say this were the path to true understanding – a kind of empathic assumption of the other’s perspective; would it even be possible for us to walk it? Can we ever suspend our own point of view and so totally assume someone else’s? If your answer to any of these questions is no, then we might have to ask whether understanding each other is possible at all.

So far, there has been much mention of “points of view” or “perspectives.” Where is all this coming from? It started when theorists began describing how language related to meaning. One way we use language is to communicate meanings. Understanding each other could be defined as the successful sharing of meanings with each other. I know what you mean; you know what I mean. This sounds simple. And, in concrete cases – “I am holding a fork” – it is pretty simple. The simplicity gets interrupted pretty quickly, however.

When the meanings we wish to share become more abstract (love, hate, insecurity, authenticity, justice, virtue, etc.), it’s difficult to know whether we’re all working from the same set of concepts, i.e. from the same point of view. Theorists in the 19^th and 20^th century have pointed out how all sorts of things – race, class, gender, age, ethnicity, education – mold points of view and, in so doing, generate different islands of meaning.

Now people are beginning to ask how bridges of understanding can arise between these islands of meaning. This question is all the more important in increasingly diverse democratic societies, where the ideal of government of the people, by the people, for the people relies on the people understanding each other and their government (and, of course, their government understanding them). The alternative to understanding each other is, perhaps, something like the Old Testament’s Tower of Babel story, where God punishes the tower-building hubris of human beings by condemning them to speak in tongues incomprehensible to each another. Babel becomes a perverse cacophony of sounds without meaning; utterance without understanding.

Altruism and Selfishness

Flower City Philosophy

May 9, 2007

Altruism and Selfishness

The word altruism comes from the Latin root alter, which means “the other.” Altruism is typically defined as a negation: unselfishness. Its root, however, reveals the possibility of an affirmative formulation: otherness. What would this mean? Altruism is a primary regard for people other than oneself. This is an important, if subtle distinction. Altruism is not merely the absence of a selfish drive; it is the presence of an other-regarding one.

Much speculation surrounds whether altruism is even possible. One argument holds that any act we do, even if it confers extraordinary benefits on some other person at what appears to be a cost to ourselves, still benefits us in a selfish way. If I charitably donate all of my worldly possessions to an out-of-work NBA basketball player, it’s not because I’m altruistic but because I derive satisfaction from the charitable act. In short, I’m still deriving more gain than cost from the act, and therefore it is a selfish one. The problem with this argument is that it amounts to a linguistic conceit. Isn’t it more accurate to describe someone who derives satisfaction from helping others as altruistic rather than as selfishly satisfying the desire to help?

The second argument against the possibility of altruism is a vaguely biological one. It states that, as creatures in nature, we have powerful drives to survive. The quest for survival requires our full energy and

attention; in fact, our entire being has been molded, through evolution, for the purpose of survival. The survival drive is manifest in intense competition between organisms. Even when cooperation occurs, it is only because individual benefits can be secured through it. As soon as those benefits whither, cooperation ends and the competition of all against all resumes. Human beings are, the argument holds, creatures made for this type of existence, and the only successful human institutions will be those which recognize this fact.

And that brings us to capitalism and democracy. By harnessing the inherent selfishness in all human beings, so the theory goes, these economic and political systems fit our natural tendencies and are, as a result, the most enduring and successful ones. Capitalism channels our competitive drives into innovation and efficiency. Democracy channels each individual or group’s own self-interested pursuits into an ordered, pluralistic society.

Some contend, however, that capitalism becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. In attempting to harness selfishness, it engenders it.

Gender

Flower City Philosophy

February 28, 2007

Gender

The origins of the English word gender are found in the Greek “génos,” which means kind, sort or class. Originally, “gender” denoted a grammatical class, referring to nouns and pronouns in Latin and its offspring.[1] Students of Romance Languages will recognize the sorting of nouns by gender: libro (book) is male; universitá (university) is female. The kind of sorting into classes that the word gender indicated is now commonly associated with “the state of being male or female (with reference to social or cultural differences).”[2]

The parenthetical there is very important, for it isn’t that gender simply designates biological sexual traits; rather, it is that gender is a social and cultural phenomenon. Therefore, it is perhaps possible to speak of a spectrum along which gender exists. Traditionally, this spectrum is conceived of as having masculine and feminine polls.

Some of the debate around gender has dealt with where, along this spectrum, our institutions, practices and modes of thought sit. Feminist critiques claim an inherent maleness in, for instance, the practice of science in the West. They have found that “scientific claims fail to reflect only an external reality. Scientific processes are not transparent; they necessarily permit cultural and social values and interests to contribute to the descriptions and explanations of nature’s order. Thus, gender values and interests, too, could have shaped scientific practices and claims.”[3] Feminists claim that science has been coded masculine, resulting in women being, often, the objects of science rather than its subjects.

Other work on gender has looked at different styles of communication, coding some masculine and others feminine. Commonly cited stereotypes are that “men insult and swear, women flatter and wheedle, women draw others out while men monopolize conversations.”[4] Is there grounding to these notions? Are men and women gendered in ways that reduce the possibilities for effective communication between them? Is the fact that there has been a greater number of male attendees at Flower City Philosophy meetings over the last four years evidence of this? If so, how can it be addressed in a constructive way?

In the limited forum of this page, I haven’t been able to pay adequate attention to the relationship between gender, the social and cultural thing, and sex, the biological thing. The existence of individuals whose biology is male but whose gender is female, and vice versa, shows how complex a question this is. We are aware of the flux swirling about these categories every day, as, colloquially, when we hear of men “getting in touch with their feminine side.”

Gender is an important topic. It is also a difficult topic, because it is present in each of us, even as we seek to analyze it. Knowing where the shoals are will, perhaps, give us greater hope for successful navigation.

1. ) the dictionary of etymology on my desk in the other room

2.) the OED also located on said desk

3.) from the encyclopedia of philosophy on - you guessed it - the desk down the hall and to the left

4.) same source

Paranoia

Flower City Philosophy

March 14, 2007

Paranoia

At the risk of sounding all too technical, Webster’s defines paranoia as “a tendency on the part of individuals or of groups toward suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others that is based not on objective reality but on a need to defend the ego against unconscious impulses, that uses projection as a mechanism of defense, and that often takes the form of a compensatory megalomania.”

In the strict psychological sense, paranoia is part of an illness: schizophrenia or some cluster of neuroses. In the general, popular sense, however, paranoia is a state of mind characterized by fear, anxiety, worry, suspicion and, as awkwardly as this construct is going to sound: general ill-at-easeness.

What causes paranoia in this general sense? Uncertainty, for one. If we do not know the mindset of our boss at work, if we are uncertain whether she thinks we are doing a good job, we may begin to read into everything she says. Looking for hidden indications of praise or opprobrium, we lie awake at night rehashing the boss’s words in our head. We may grow suspicious of the new coworker who we observed laughing heartily with the boss during lunch. Were they laughing at me? Does the boss prefer that coworker? Is that coworker gunning for my job? How quickly the paranoid spiral envelopes us. In this case, uncertainty pairs with competition to create paranoia.

And we are certainly living in competitive and uncertain times.

What else breeds paranoia? I think of the paranoid lives of those living under the Soviet, Nazi, and Baathist regimes. Not only were they under surveillance, not only were they living in deep uncertainty, they had also seen examples of the horror that might befall them. Germans had seen the Gestapo dragging off neighbors in the night. Soviets had seen “traitors” hung, sent off to Siberia, or horribly mangled from tortuous interrogations. Iraqis under Saddam would receive in black plastic bags partial remains of relatives killed by the regime. These people had a very real, tangible sense of the shape that bad things which might happen to them would take.

We don’t live under such a regime. Yet we all know vivid stories of the horrors that might await us if we lose our job, end our relationship, or vacation in the wrong third world country. These examples of fearful endings inspire in us the greatest anxiety, the greatest suspicion, the greatest paranoia.

Authenticity

Flower City Philosophy

January 24, 2007

Authenticity

"This above all - to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

-William Shakespeare in Hamlet-

"You got to be who you are when you are."

-Snoop Dog-

The lines above speak of an authentic self – a real self, a true self, a genuine self. When people speak about authenticity, it is often this special kind of selfhood that they are speaking of. In the existentialist tradition, authenticity entails coming to terms with, then living in the presence of the blunt fact of our existence. An authentic self is one with no delusions about the kind of endeavor human being is.

Yet when people speak of authenticity, they may not always be speaking about the self. It is possible to speak of authentic experiences or moments; it is also possible to speak of authentic art or authentic literature. We may even like to speak about an authentic (or, more frequently, an inauthentic) culture. It is not just persons who lack or have the property of being authentic; it is a whole host of things.

So what do any of these things – art, moments, cultures or persons – have in common when they are called “authentic?” Perhaps it is that they lack the quality of deception - authenticity does not intend to fool us. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot tells the story of a man who is so utterly authentic that people – jaded imperial Russian courtiers – take him for a fool. Authenticity can only deceive us when we have grown to expect its absence. Closely related to the idea of authenticity as the lack of deception is authenticity as the lack of manipulation or design.

Authenticity seeks not outside itself; it is its own end. It points at no other goals: the creation of a certain impression, the eliciting of a particular reaction, an influence on minds and behavior. Inauthenticity seems always to seek outside itself. It is practiced for the sake of some objective: wooing another, covering up an ugliness about oneself or one’s surroundings, abiding by external standards.

Is authenticity always better than its absence? How can we generate authenticity? Where is it likely to be found? How is it sustained? What is its worth?

Honesty

Flower City Philosophy

August 23, 2006

Honesty

Honesty typically entails some relation to truth. “Being honest” is about revealing the truth of something to oneself and others. One basic definition of honesty could simply be “truth-telling.”

Is telling or revealing the truth the same as facing the truth? When we speak of “being honest with oneself,” we seem to be indicating not only that one must reveal the truth, but that one must confront it. This confrontation may often take the form of action. For instance, a stock broker who becomes honest with himself may face the truth that he is supposed to teach – causing him to quit his job and take up one at an independent school (admittedly, the example is rather unlikely).

The relationship between honesty and action has been explored by various theorists. Many of these theories follow a common structure: one set of underlying forces determines human affairs, but we are not honest about confronting these forces; we delude ourselves and, as a result, contradictions and tensions arise which ultimately lead to some undoing. For Marx, honesty meant acknowledging that the basic condition of civilization is class conflict between owners and workers. The workers, experiencing “false consciousness,” delude themselves into thinking this is not the case. The contradictions – or alienation – that the workers experience as a result of their deluded state eventually lead them to realize their predicament and rise up in revolt. Likewise, Freud felt that the most honest appraisal of human affairs entails reference to the sexual drive. Freud held that civilization, with all its morays and restraints, conceals this truth from us. The resulting contradiction creates the kind of neurotic episodes Freud catalogued in his Vienna study. Freudian psychoanalytic therapy aims at solving neuroses by inculcating in patients an awareness of their sexual, subconscious underpinnings – in effect, asking them to be honest with themselves.

Contemporary psychology refers to the condition of being, in some sense, dishonest with oneself as “cognitive dissonance.” This label defines a condition whereby a person’s actions do not align with their beliefs, values or identity. Such dissonant individuals may feel that they cannot be honest with themselves, for such honesty may require them to confront painful contradictions and, to resolve such contradictions, make significant changes. And change is a common source of fear and anxiety.

Is honesty desirable? If honesty often entails pain, why should we be honest? Perhaps delusions are helpful fictions that allow us to cope with difficult conditions. When Marx described religion as “the opiate of the masses,” there were those who felt that a narcotic is precisely what was needed. Literature and philosophy often tell us that, instead of being honest about the “awful truth” of the universe, human beings are wise to dwell within more comfortable narratives that enable them to carry on.[1]

Lastly, is honesty a requirement of the ethical life? Can dishonesty ever be ethical? If honesty is an ethical requirement, then to what degree? What are the requirements for disclosure? Must we tell each other everything all the time? Must we answer honestly all questions which are asked of us (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.”)? How does the distinction between lying and holding back information play into this?

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[1] See, for instance, Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” passage from The Brothers Karamazov.