I find two theses compelling which are somewhat at odds with each other. The first regards the nature of human activity and the second regards the nature of time.
First, let us consider my view of time. I hold a block theory of time. This theory holds that all times are equally real. It is difficult to articulate the theory in English since English does not permit us to speak without designating time. When I say that all times "are" equally real, this can be misheard as saying that they are all real at the same time. They clearly are not at the same time. They are at different times. Each moment of time is equally determinate, equally specified as being as it was, is, or will be. I thus reject the view that any time possesses the real property "is present" or "is future" or "is past." Rather, on my view, these must be what one might call "pseudo-properties" or "secondary properties." They are properties which hold of phenomena only perspectivally, that is, from a certain point of view. In this case, a time is past only with respect to other times which are future with respect to it.
Let us now turn to the view of human activity. The view is the expressivist one which we considered a few days ago. This is the view that a human's action determines that human more specifically. The view is that an action specifies and clarifies what one is more determinately. The view thus holds that how one is is more indeterminate further in the past, and becomes more determinate as one acts. From this point of view, my future is indeterminate until I act and thereby specify it.
This view of human action also seems to conflict with another view of human activity which I hold, that is, a compatibilist account of human freedom. I hold that our actions may be fully responsible, fully expressive even, whether or not our actions are determined by facts prior to and independent of them. Thus, I am committed to a view on which the expressivity of human action, if it holds, is independent of whether or not those actions are fully determined by the past together with the laws of nature or by divine decree.
Thus, I have a view on which our future is both indeterminate and determinate. In traditional philosophical fashion, I propose to resolve this dilemma with a distinction. The distinction is between an immanent and a transcendent frame, or two different perspectives on human activity.
The transcendent frame is the perspective from which we see things from eternity, as it were. It is the perspective which grants all reality equal being, and registers properties as they appear in their place in the whole. In this point of view, it is fully determinate that George Washington would be president, and it is fully determinate at his birth that he would be so, because we are observing all of these moments together, relating them together. In this frame, everything is as it occurs in its full development throughout time.
The immanent frame, on the other hand, is the perspective of beings in time, agents acting responsively to events. This perspective acts in relation to a determinate present, a less determinate past, and an even less determinate future. It is the perspective of agent-perceivers, and thus the perspective of situated beings who negotiate an environment.
The challenge, then, is to show that these two perspectives are not at odds with each other, but compatible. In fact, it is necessary for me, as someone who holds that God views the world through both frames at once, to argue that the two frames can be used together, that they provide complementary, rather than opposed, views on the world.
Because I am arguing that God views the world through both frames, it is not open to me to hold that the immanent frame is one of ignorance. In our case, it is an ignorant frame. In our case, the immanent frame's perspective of the past is indeterminate because we are forgetful, and the future is indeterminate because we do not yet know what it holds, but my claim is that these degrees of indeterminacy hold when God views the world through the immanent frame, too. Yet God knows what the past held and what the future holds, so how can this be so?
The crucial distinction between the two frames is that the immanent frame is the frame of agents. Agents perform actions which impact the development of the future and the interpretation of the past. So the difference between the immanent and transcendent frames is the difference between being part of the course of events and being a mere observer, respectively. It is the fact that the immanent frame necessarily observes the flow as one in which one can intervene, whereas the transcendent frame observes the flow as completed. One decides, the other observes the results of the decisions.
God decides in full knowledge of what he will decide, but this is not a problem for his use of the immanent frame since he is perfectly good and takes it all in together. The indeterminacy of the immanent frame for God is strangely ambivalent. It is one which is hardly there, since there is no space in which he has not already determined what he will do, yet it is a supposition of his decision--his decision determines the future as much, if not more so, in his case as in ours. It thus fills in what "was" indeterminate, what would otherwise be determined differently.
This is not a synthesis or a pair of frames which it is easy to hold together. It is easy to view them as incompatible, and it mirrors the difficulty others have in melding a scientific and ordinary view of the world. One of the challenges of philosophy in general is melding together, in some coherent way, the world as revealed by science and the world we seem to find ourselves, the world of quarks and E=mc^2 and the world of ordinary clocks, chairs, and trees. The division into two perspectives is a frequent way of trying to solve this problem, but often has the result of opposing the two views. My hope that my pair of perspectives are more clearly compatible than others.
By temperament, I am opposed to dualisms, and this pair of views is close to being yet another dualism. Ideally, we can locate a unity beneath the difference which would support and motivate the difference. I am not sure. Alternatively, perhaps there is a point of view from which both perspectives can be united in ordinary life, not just in the life of God. It is a benefit of my view, however, that it is required to permit the two views to occur alongside one another in at least the case of God.
Monday, April 16, 2018
Saturday, April 14, 2018
The Unity of Thought and Feeling
There is a claim that some people are "thinkers" and others are "feelers," that some people are logical and others rely on their emotions. I want to contest that claim here.
First, a note on what I will not be claiming: I will not claim that we are all alike in how we think and feel. Clearly, some people are more comfortable going with their gut and others are more comfortable when they have an argument in propositional form. What I am contesting is the idea feeling and thinking are separable, that the two do not blend together, are not, at root, one.
Second, I want to establish the terms at stake here. Thinking, in the sense used here, is propositional, logical, and linear. Feeling, in the sense used here, is emotive, passionate, and might not be able to be articulated in a manner commensurable with thought in the sense used here. Both are ways of making sense of reality and determining what to do. Both result in a practical conclusion: the phi-ing which the process directs one to.
My claim, then, is, first, that there is a logic to emotion and a passion to thought, second, that these intertwine in such a way that it is not easy to pull them apart, and third, that attempting to separate the two weakens both.
That there is a logic to emotions can be seen from the fact that we expect to be able to give reasons for our emotions. There are right and wrong--rational and irrational--ways of feeling about things. In general, emotions are reactions to how we take things to be, and they motivate us to respond in particular ways. Thus, emotions can go wrong in one of two ways: they can be wrong because things are not actually as we take them to be, or they can be wrong because they motivate actions which do not fit with how things actually are. In the ordinary case, these two ways of going wrong go together. They can come apart when we are wrong about situations but, by a fluke, our emotions still motivate us properly, or when we are right about the situation but have not developed our emotions to motivate us well. I will return to this latter case below.
The passion to thought is a little less obvious, perhaps particularly in our age. Thought involves the analysis of a situation and thus enables us to clarify how things actually are, and thus how we ought to feel about them. Thought occurs in language which expresses not only propositions but also passion. Even the cold logical language of a textbook expresses a careful concern with precision. Those of us with a strong bent towards using such modes of thought are often quite passionate about precision and clarity.
Emotion and thought are united in language. Words carry with them emotional connotations as well as forming propositions. Emotions are often expressed linguistically, and our linguistic abilities enable us to specify and form more particular kinds of emotion. Thoughts are expressed passionately, and the propositional form of thought ensures that every proposition is intertwined with emotion. It is striking the way that some thinkers' lives mirror their ideas.
There have been studies showing how much our thought is motivated by our values, and this is often considered a problem for our rationality, but I want to argue that it is, in fact, conducive and necessary to our rationality. Our values and emotions, when they are working well, orient us toward how things are, toward what it is important to think about. Freedom is more heavily theorized when it is under threat, when freedom is seized as a value by people who understand it differently or when it is denied as a value by some and held to by others. Getting clear on what we are passionate about is generally how thought starts. Post-hoc rationalization may exist because it is generally the best way to get things right, because our reasons for acting are only available after the fact and are most likely to be in alignment with our values. It may also enable us to form a unity because it forces us to express reasons on which we will be expected to continue to act, forces us to clarify what our values are and how they influence our actions.
It has also been suggested that too much thought inhibits feeling. I want to argue that thought is necessary for certain kinds of feeling and especially for feeling correctly. Emotion gains determinate content and nuance in its expression in language. One can be indeterminately angry, but this becomes experienced differently when one considers one's situation and articulates what one is angry about and why. This, then, guides the actions which the anger motivates in a more profitable manner, and enables us to judge our emotions as rational or irrational. Being clear about our values enables us to understand our emotions better, and enables the emotions to motivate more fitting actions. Thought also develops emotions generally, enabling us to express emotions in new ways, and thus honing the expressions of various emotions to fit better with how things are in a general way. We can learn to express anger without throwing temper tantrums, and this is done, in part, through thinking through how the world works and how to express anger well given how the world works.
This brings me to a final comment on this unity. Neither thought nor feeling is developed in isolation from society. Many emotions are communal emotions, like shame and indignation. Thought relies on language, which is a social phenomenon. I would argue that thought also occurs in inherently social and embodied ways, such that the way I learn not to throw temper tantrums need not be by articulating and reasoning solely with propositions, but may occur via dialogue with others, by experimentation, and by developing my values by participating in a social life which relies on both feeling and thought and the linguistic meshing of the two, as well as the social development of both.
First, a note on what I will not be claiming: I will not claim that we are all alike in how we think and feel. Clearly, some people are more comfortable going with their gut and others are more comfortable when they have an argument in propositional form. What I am contesting is the idea feeling and thinking are separable, that the two do not blend together, are not, at root, one.
Second, I want to establish the terms at stake here. Thinking, in the sense used here, is propositional, logical, and linear. Feeling, in the sense used here, is emotive, passionate, and might not be able to be articulated in a manner commensurable with thought in the sense used here. Both are ways of making sense of reality and determining what to do. Both result in a practical conclusion: the phi-ing which the process directs one to.
My claim, then, is, first, that there is a logic to emotion and a passion to thought, second, that these intertwine in such a way that it is not easy to pull them apart, and third, that attempting to separate the two weakens both.
That there is a logic to emotions can be seen from the fact that we expect to be able to give reasons for our emotions. There are right and wrong--rational and irrational--ways of feeling about things. In general, emotions are reactions to how we take things to be, and they motivate us to respond in particular ways. Thus, emotions can go wrong in one of two ways: they can be wrong because things are not actually as we take them to be, or they can be wrong because they motivate actions which do not fit with how things actually are. In the ordinary case, these two ways of going wrong go together. They can come apart when we are wrong about situations but, by a fluke, our emotions still motivate us properly, or when we are right about the situation but have not developed our emotions to motivate us well. I will return to this latter case below.
The passion to thought is a little less obvious, perhaps particularly in our age. Thought involves the analysis of a situation and thus enables us to clarify how things actually are, and thus how we ought to feel about them. Thought occurs in language which expresses not only propositions but also passion. Even the cold logical language of a textbook expresses a careful concern with precision. Those of us with a strong bent towards using such modes of thought are often quite passionate about precision and clarity.
Emotion and thought are united in language. Words carry with them emotional connotations as well as forming propositions. Emotions are often expressed linguistically, and our linguistic abilities enable us to specify and form more particular kinds of emotion. Thoughts are expressed passionately, and the propositional form of thought ensures that every proposition is intertwined with emotion. It is striking the way that some thinkers' lives mirror their ideas.
There have been studies showing how much our thought is motivated by our values, and this is often considered a problem for our rationality, but I want to argue that it is, in fact, conducive and necessary to our rationality. Our values and emotions, when they are working well, orient us toward how things are, toward what it is important to think about. Freedom is more heavily theorized when it is under threat, when freedom is seized as a value by people who understand it differently or when it is denied as a value by some and held to by others. Getting clear on what we are passionate about is generally how thought starts. Post-hoc rationalization may exist because it is generally the best way to get things right, because our reasons for acting are only available after the fact and are most likely to be in alignment with our values. It may also enable us to form a unity because it forces us to express reasons on which we will be expected to continue to act, forces us to clarify what our values are and how they influence our actions.
It has also been suggested that too much thought inhibits feeling. I want to argue that thought is necessary for certain kinds of feeling and especially for feeling correctly. Emotion gains determinate content and nuance in its expression in language. One can be indeterminately angry, but this becomes experienced differently when one considers one's situation and articulates what one is angry about and why. This, then, guides the actions which the anger motivates in a more profitable manner, and enables us to judge our emotions as rational or irrational. Being clear about our values enables us to understand our emotions better, and enables the emotions to motivate more fitting actions. Thought also develops emotions generally, enabling us to express emotions in new ways, and thus honing the expressions of various emotions to fit better with how things are in a general way. We can learn to express anger without throwing temper tantrums, and this is done, in part, through thinking through how the world works and how to express anger well given how the world works.
This brings me to a final comment on this unity. Neither thought nor feeling is developed in isolation from society. Many emotions are communal emotions, like shame and indignation. Thought relies on language, which is a social phenomenon. I would argue that thought also occurs in inherently social and embodied ways, such that the way I learn not to throw temper tantrums need not be by articulating and reasoning solely with propositions, but may occur via dialogue with others, by experimentation, and by developing my values by participating in a social life which relies on both feeling and thought and the linguistic meshing of the two, as well as the social development of both.
Friday, April 13, 2018
Knowledge-Of and -That
To finish off this mini-series about kinds of knowledge, I want to consider the relationship between knowledge-of and knowledge-that. We have already said that both rely on knowledge-how. One might therefore think that one could have either one without the other. I have not given any reason to think otherwise.
Instead, I want to argue that they are equally basic but not independent. I do not claim that to possess knowledge-of one must also require knowledge-that or vice-versa, but that, if one can possess knowledge-of, then one can also possess knowledge-that, and vice-versa.
Knowledge-that requires the ability to use language to communicate to others what one knows and the ability to operate on propositions logically. This linguistic requirement entails the requirement that one be able to know others personally. To be able to communicate a proposition in a language, and thus, on my account, to know a proposition, one must know how to use language. The use of language, in turn, requires the ability to recognize others as possessing mentality, for instance, recognizing others as meaning something, as aiming at some goal, etc.
If one has this ability, then one is able to achieve knowledge-of people. Knowledge-of is built out of an understanding of the mental architecture, as it were, of another: the other's abiding mental features, such as their hopes and fears, the way they feel and think, etc. This underlying ability is, moreover, sufficient, together with a general capacity for knowledge in general (that is, the ability to retain this recognition), for knowledge-of, and likewise for language and knowledge-that.
This claim, that the ability to recognize others as possessing mentality is sufficient for learning language, may seem like an odd claim. It seems contentious whether animals possess such a capacity. I therefore owe an argument for that claim.
Particularly with respect to propositional knowledge, language's distinctive feature is its ability to refer to things and attribute predicates of those things. My claim is that our ability to recognize and know others' mental features, together with the ability to retain such knowledge, enables us to recognize objects as subject to referential relations, in part because it enables imaginative activity. We are able to retain another's attitudes toward things and thus are able to retain a kind of link between sounds and objects which is flexible enough for language. Attitudes which embed further attitudes depend on a reciprocity of this kind of knowledge of other minds--A fears that B hopes that C intends to come tomorrow--and permits this embedding in language and thereby permits full-fledged language.
This is just a sketch of my account, and others may run things differently, perhaps arguing that language enables what I have counted as the more basic capacities. The problem with running it backwards is that it makes it harder to account for the origin of language if one needs language in order to recognize others as minded. If we instead suppose that humans come into the world with certain capacities to recognize others, and that language builds on this, then we can account for the origin of language without magic.
Instead, I want to argue that they are equally basic but not independent. I do not claim that to possess knowledge-of one must also require knowledge-that or vice-versa, but that, if one can possess knowledge-of, then one can also possess knowledge-that, and vice-versa.
Knowledge-that requires the ability to use language to communicate to others what one knows and the ability to operate on propositions logically. This linguistic requirement entails the requirement that one be able to know others personally. To be able to communicate a proposition in a language, and thus, on my account, to know a proposition, one must know how to use language. The use of language, in turn, requires the ability to recognize others as possessing mentality, for instance, recognizing others as meaning something, as aiming at some goal, etc.
If one has this ability, then one is able to achieve knowledge-of people. Knowledge-of is built out of an understanding of the mental architecture, as it were, of another: the other's abiding mental features, such as their hopes and fears, the way they feel and think, etc. This underlying ability is, moreover, sufficient, together with a general capacity for knowledge in general (that is, the ability to retain this recognition), for knowledge-of, and likewise for language and knowledge-that.
This claim, that the ability to recognize others as possessing mentality is sufficient for learning language, may seem like an odd claim. It seems contentious whether animals possess such a capacity. I therefore owe an argument for that claim.
Particularly with respect to propositional knowledge, language's distinctive feature is its ability to refer to things and attribute predicates of those things. My claim is that our ability to recognize and know others' mental features, together with the ability to retain such knowledge, enables us to recognize objects as subject to referential relations, in part because it enables imaginative activity. We are able to retain another's attitudes toward things and thus are able to retain a kind of link between sounds and objects which is flexible enough for language. Attitudes which embed further attitudes depend on a reciprocity of this kind of knowledge of other minds--A fears that B hopes that C intends to come tomorrow--and permits this embedding in language and thereby permits full-fledged language.
This is just a sketch of my account, and others may run things differently, perhaps arguing that language enables what I have counted as the more basic capacities. The problem with running it backwards is that it makes it harder to account for the origin of language if one needs language in order to recognize others as minded. If we instead suppose that humans come into the world with certain capacities to recognize others, and that language builds on this, then we can account for the origin of language without magic.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Personal Knowledge
In the previous two posts, I have focused on knowledge-how and knowledge-that. There is a third kind of knowledge which might be called knowledge-of. Knowledge-of is also called personal knowledge. It is the knowledge one has of people when one says one knows them. If I know about someone, I merely possess knowledge-that certain facts obtain regarding that person. If I know them, I can predict their actions and understand them.
The obvious question, after yesterday's post, is whether knowledge-how is more or less basic than knowledge-of. I think knowledge-how is the more basic of the two, and thus, barring further kinds of knowledge, the most basic kind of knowledge. Why do I think this?
Let me first raise an objection to my view. One might say that knowledge of others is more basic than even capacities because it is how we gain capacities. We learn how to act by observing others acting, and we learn how to respond to various events by watching others respond. On this account, a capacity would be something more than a possible action. It would have to be an possible action which could also fail to occur, so that I learn that there is more than the obvious thing to do by observing that others respond differently. If we were to define capacities in this manner, I think this account would be right. I also think that it would make knowledge-how unnecessary for knowledge-that and capacities unnecessary for knowledge-how. I will return to this point below.
When we get to know others, we gain capacities. If I know you well, I have certain capacities: the capacity to predict how you will respond to certain claims, foods, or environments. The capacity to understand your train of thought. The capacity to recognize you by how you walk, or how you talk. Many of these capacities are subtle and unconscious. Someone who knows of me only by reading these posts may know a great deal about how I think through things and what my views on things are, but such a reader will not know how I operate in real-time conversations, nor what certain faces I make mean, let alone what I like to eat or the way my thoughts flow when they are not written. These are a particular sort of knowledge-how. Humans generally have the know-how required to get to know each other. What is peculiar about knowledge-of, and what sets it apart from knowledge-how and knowledge-that, is that it is based on knowledge of another's dispositions, another's knowledge-how and -that, and it can rarely if ever be fully communicated. Knowledge-of is peculiar, then, because it manifests the peculiar human sensitivity to others as other selves like ourselves.
The obvious question, after yesterday's post, is whether knowledge-how is more or less basic than knowledge-of. I think knowledge-how is the more basic of the two, and thus, barring further kinds of knowledge, the most basic kind of knowledge. Why do I think this?
Let me first raise an objection to my view. One might say that knowledge of others is more basic than even capacities because it is how we gain capacities. We learn how to act by observing others acting, and we learn how to respond to various events by watching others respond. On this account, a capacity would be something more than a possible action. It would have to be an possible action which could also fail to occur, so that I learn that there is more than the obvious thing to do by observing that others respond differently. If we were to define capacities in this manner, I think this account would be right. I also think that it would make knowledge-how unnecessary for knowledge-that and capacities unnecessary for knowledge-how. I will return to this point below.
When we get to know others, we gain capacities. If I know you well, I have certain capacities: the capacity to predict how you will respond to certain claims, foods, or environments. The capacity to understand your train of thought. The capacity to recognize you by how you walk, or how you talk. Many of these capacities are subtle and unconscious. Someone who knows of me only by reading these posts may know a great deal about how I think through things and what my views on things are, but such a reader will not know how I operate in real-time conversations, nor what certain faces I make mean, let alone what I like to eat or the way my thoughts flow when they are not written. These are a particular sort of knowledge-how. Humans generally have the know-how required to get to know each other. What is peculiar about knowledge-of, and what sets it apart from knowledge-how and knowledge-that, is that it is based on knowledge of another's dispositions, another's knowledge-how and -that, and it can rarely if ever be fully communicated. Knowledge-of is peculiar, then, because it manifests the peculiar human sensitivity to others as other selves like ourselves.
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Propositional Knowledge
I suggested yesterday that knowledge is more basically knowledge-how than knowledge-that. In other words that knowledge is more basically knowledge of how to do things than knowledge of propositions. In this post, I want to articulate a view of propositional knowledge which builds on yesterday's account. One might easily have thought, given yesterday's post, that I would simply reduce all knowledge to capacities--that is basically where I left the discussion in yesterday's post.
While I do claim that all knowledge involves capacities, knowledge-that is distinctive in the kinds of capacities it involves. Knowledge-that involves a particular kind of linguistic capacities. The knowledge of a language uses linguistic capacities of a different sort--the ability to say things in French is a kind of knowledge-how, but not, in itself, a kind of knowledge-that. When one knows a proposition, one can work linguistically and logically with that proposition to derive further knowledge.
If I know where my wife is, there are two kinds of capacities which I may possess. I may have the ability to go find my wife. Stopping here, all I need to have is know-how. I may also have the ability to state where she is, and to make inferences based on the articulation of that claim. I can also transfer the information to others in a particular fashion, that is, without directly exhibiting other capacities. I could teach you how to find my wife be showing you my own capacity to find her, just as most of us learn physical activities partially by watching others do the actions involved and mimicking them, but if I need you to go get her for me, then that will not help. Propositions are able to package some capacities with them, given shared background understandings, in such a way that we can teach those capacities more efficiently. One may need to understand the field in order to understand the proposition and thus gain the capacities--it is not enough to be able to repeat the proposition--yet this is a distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that. This account leaves know-how as the more basic of the two, but does not completely reduce knowledge-that to knowledge-how.
One might respond that I have reduced knowledge-that to knowledge-how, since I have given an account of knowledge-that in terms of capacities, albeit a particular kind of capacity. In a sense, this is right, but I have not simply defined every instance of knowledge as identical to a set of capacities. This can be applied more broadly: two individuals can know how to play baseball equally well, yet have different baseball-relevant capacities: one might throw farther, the other might run faster. The two individuals might even know equally well how to throw a baseball, yet one might have torn a ligament in his shoulder and thus lack the capacity. So knowledge is not just capacities. Nevertheless, the basis of knowledge is formed by capacities.
So, to refine my claim: capacities are more basic than knowledge-how, and knowledge-how is, in turn more basic than knowledge-that. Each one adds to the prior and goes beyond it, so that it might exist apart from it. I can know a proposition without being able to do anything with it, but I can only know propositions because they usually enable me to make use of information contained in them, and my knowledge of a currently useless proposition presumes that it might become useful to me, perhaps after I have learned more about the field it is about. Similarly, knowledge-how may occur without capacities, but I can only possess knowledge-how because I can possess capacities, and I can only be said to know how to do something without possessing the capacity to do it now under the assumption that I might possess the capacity should I be in a suitable position to use my know-how.
While I do claim that all knowledge involves capacities, knowledge-that is distinctive in the kinds of capacities it involves. Knowledge-that involves a particular kind of linguistic capacities. The knowledge of a language uses linguistic capacities of a different sort--the ability to say things in French is a kind of knowledge-how, but not, in itself, a kind of knowledge-that. When one knows a proposition, one can work linguistically and logically with that proposition to derive further knowledge.
If I know where my wife is, there are two kinds of capacities which I may possess. I may have the ability to go find my wife. Stopping here, all I need to have is know-how. I may also have the ability to state where she is, and to make inferences based on the articulation of that claim. I can also transfer the information to others in a particular fashion, that is, without directly exhibiting other capacities. I could teach you how to find my wife be showing you my own capacity to find her, just as most of us learn physical activities partially by watching others do the actions involved and mimicking them, but if I need you to go get her for me, then that will not help. Propositions are able to package some capacities with them, given shared background understandings, in such a way that we can teach those capacities more efficiently. One may need to understand the field in order to understand the proposition and thus gain the capacities--it is not enough to be able to repeat the proposition--yet this is a distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that. This account leaves know-how as the more basic of the two, but does not completely reduce knowledge-that to knowledge-how.
One might respond that I have reduced knowledge-that to knowledge-how, since I have given an account of knowledge-that in terms of capacities, albeit a particular kind of capacity. In a sense, this is right, but I have not simply defined every instance of knowledge as identical to a set of capacities. This can be applied more broadly: two individuals can know how to play baseball equally well, yet have different baseball-relevant capacities: one might throw farther, the other might run faster. The two individuals might even know equally well how to throw a baseball, yet one might have torn a ligament in his shoulder and thus lack the capacity. So knowledge is not just capacities. Nevertheless, the basis of knowledge is formed by capacities.
So, to refine my claim: capacities are more basic than knowledge-how, and knowledge-how is, in turn more basic than knowledge-that. Each one adds to the prior and goes beyond it, so that it might exist apart from it. I can know a proposition without being able to do anything with it, but I can only know propositions because they usually enable me to make use of information contained in them, and my knowledge of a currently useless proposition presumes that it might become useful to me, perhaps after I have learned more about the field it is about. Similarly, knowledge-how may occur without capacities, but I can only possess knowledge-how because I can possess capacities, and I can only be said to know how to do something without possessing the capacity to do it now under the assumption that I might possess the capacity should I be in a suitable position to use my know-how.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Learning, The Nature of Knowledge, and Dewey
learning involves someone coming to know something something which the learner did not know before. Thus, it involves a transmission from not knowing to knowing. I suspect that this gives us a hint as to the nature of knowledge. I will finish with a note on how our understanding of knowledge might affect our pedagogy by noting how John Dewey's account, which is similar to the one I push for here, affected his pedagogy.
To learn something requires that one be able to do something with it. If I teach you the definition of a term, and you cannot apply the term accurately, I will not say that you have learned the term. Learning, then, whether learning a sport or learning an academic subject, involves the acquisition of capacities. Thus, knowledge is practical: it involves possessing abilities. Or, to put it another way: learning is practical: it involves gaining new capacities (I do not, at this point, make a distinction between an ability and a capacity).
The puzzles about knowledge which this helps us address are multiple. The first one I want to address, however, is about the nature of a state of knowledge. Given my claim that learning involves gaining capacities and that knowledge entails possessing such capacities, it is not entirely clear whether we gain the capacities and thus gain knowledge or gain knowledge which necessarily provides us with the capacities. To put it another way: are the capacities equivalent to the knowledge or merely a symptom of the knowledge?
Think about how we teach things. We may talk, and articulate propositions, and even expect the student to be able to regurgitate some of these propositions, but the end goal is always a kind of action. If we are teaching mathematics, we give students problems to solve, and we measure the students' understanding by their ability to solve the problems. The focus on abilities is even clearer in sports or languages, where the entire goal is to form certain capacities, not to have the students be able to regurgitate propositions on command.
This does not mean that knowledge just is the capacities we teach. However, it strongly suggests that knowledge is not chiefly knowledge of propositions, which it is frequently taken to be by those who think that knowledge merely results in abilities. The basic kind of knowledge, to use more technical terms, is more likely to be knowledge-how than knowledge-that.
This should help explain why a pragmatist like Dewey develops the kind of pedagogical approach he does. Pragmatists tend to hold that what matters about a proposition is its use-value: what one does with it. They thus tend to hold much closer to a view of knowledge as consisting in capacities than others. Dewey's pedagogy relies a huge amount on having students interacting practically with the subject matter, because he believed that the closer you can tie the point of an action--the capacities whose development is being developed in teaching the subject--to teaching it, the easier it is to learn. That is, he generalizes from the claim that one cannot learn to play baseball except by playing baseball to the claim that one cannot learn, for instance, biology, without actually doing biology, whereas the default mode of teaching is to teach the products of biology.
To learn something requires that one be able to do something with it. If I teach you the definition of a term, and you cannot apply the term accurately, I will not say that you have learned the term. Learning, then, whether learning a sport or learning an academic subject, involves the acquisition of capacities. Thus, knowledge is practical: it involves possessing abilities. Or, to put it another way: learning is practical: it involves gaining new capacities (I do not, at this point, make a distinction between an ability and a capacity).
The puzzles about knowledge which this helps us address are multiple. The first one I want to address, however, is about the nature of a state of knowledge. Given my claim that learning involves gaining capacities and that knowledge entails possessing such capacities, it is not entirely clear whether we gain the capacities and thus gain knowledge or gain knowledge which necessarily provides us with the capacities. To put it another way: are the capacities equivalent to the knowledge or merely a symptom of the knowledge?
Think about how we teach things. We may talk, and articulate propositions, and even expect the student to be able to regurgitate some of these propositions, but the end goal is always a kind of action. If we are teaching mathematics, we give students problems to solve, and we measure the students' understanding by their ability to solve the problems. The focus on abilities is even clearer in sports or languages, where the entire goal is to form certain capacities, not to have the students be able to regurgitate propositions on command.
This does not mean that knowledge just is the capacities we teach. However, it strongly suggests that knowledge is not chiefly knowledge of propositions, which it is frequently taken to be by those who think that knowledge merely results in abilities. The basic kind of knowledge, to use more technical terms, is more likely to be knowledge-how than knowledge-that.
This should help explain why a pragmatist like Dewey develops the kind of pedagogical approach he does. Pragmatists tend to hold that what matters about a proposition is its use-value: what one does with it. They thus tend to hold much closer to a view of knowledge as consisting in capacities than others. Dewey's pedagogy relies a huge amount on having students interacting practically with the subject matter, because he believed that the closer you can tie the point of an action--the capacities whose development is being developed in teaching the subject--to teaching it, the easier it is to learn. That is, he generalizes from the claim that one cannot learn to play baseball except by playing baseball to the claim that one cannot learn, for instance, biology, without actually doing biology, whereas the default mode of teaching is to teach the products of biology.
Monday, April 9, 2018
Politically Correct Speech
I want to begin this post by articulating what seems to be a common account of expression in continental philosophy. I first encountered it clearly in M.C. Dillon's Merleau-Ponty's Ontology, and Charles Taylor, early on in his Hegel, for instance, articulates its development in the late 18th century, focusing on Herder. I will draw primarily from Taylor's account.
Expression in this technical sense means an articulation which at the same time defines what it articulates. That is, rather than simply referring to something, saying something about something outside it which exists independently of it, an expression contributes to what the thing it is about is. When I express myself in this way, then, I not only give vent to something about myself, make myself known to others, but I also give voice to something which may not quite have existed otherwise. I actualize a potential in me by giving voice to it, and may make something my goal by claiming it as my goal. My nature does not pre-exist my development in the way that a blueprint pre-exists a building, although it may be latent in me as the tree is latent in the acorn.
On this account, whenever we speak we give voice to a view of reality, we articulate a relationship between ourselves and ourselves, others, and nature. Our speech, perhaps especially our spontaneous speech, therefore shapes us, and it shapes us whether or not we are aware of it. By using sets of words which are burdened with particular associations in the language we find ourselves in, we are molded by those associations. The truth of the claim that we should speak in a politically correct manner is that words do more than come together to form propositions, they express views on the world, and even a single word or phrase might warp our vision of reality simply be remaining in use.
If this is right, then the conflict about political correctness is a conflict over how to view reality. It might merely be a conflict over whether this account of expression is accurate, except that many of those who object to being politically correct have their own terms which they would exclude, at least in some domains. It might merely be about how free we should be to express ourselves how we want, except that those who are against political correctness are also against some forms of self-expression. Instead, I suspect hesitancy about being politically correct occurs where people hold that the terms being excluded are necessary to (or express concepts necessary to) an accurate understanding of reality.
Another consequence of this view is the old view that we should be careful what we put in our minds, or what we sing, or otherwise what we do. That is, if expression forms us, forms our view of ourselves and reality, molds our desires and natures, then the words we sing and dance to mold us too. The movies we watch and the stories we tell, likewise, shape us. To endorse political correctness requires endorsing a view of entertainment as having an edificational dimension: a movie can corrupt us or edify us, and very few, if any, do neither. We can thus critique movies based on the account of reality and the good life which they tell, and both liberals and conservatives do. The objections of some liberals to casting decisions is quite like the objections of some Christians to sex scenes--both believe that consuming such media forms us in a bad way. The disagreement is merely as to what is good and bad in entertainment. What does edifying speech look like? That is the question raised in the conflict over politically correct speech.
Expression in this technical sense means an articulation which at the same time defines what it articulates. That is, rather than simply referring to something, saying something about something outside it which exists independently of it, an expression contributes to what the thing it is about is. When I express myself in this way, then, I not only give vent to something about myself, make myself known to others, but I also give voice to something which may not quite have existed otherwise. I actualize a potential in me by giving voice to it, and may make something my goal by claiming it as my goal. My nature does not pre-exist my development in the way that a blueprint pre-exists a building, although it may be latent in me as the tree is latent in the acorn.
On this account, whenever we speak we give voice to a view of reality, we articulate a relationship between ourselves and ourselves, others, and nature. Our speech, perhaps especially our spontaneous speech, therefore shapes us, and it shapes us whether or not we are aware of it. By using sets of words which are burdened with particular associations in the language we find ourselves in, we are molded by those associations. The truth of the claim that we should speak in a politically correct manner is that words do more than come together to form propositions, they express views on the world, and even a single word or phrase might warp our vision of reality simply be remaining in use.
If this is right, then the conflict about political correctness is a conflict over how to view reality. It might merely be a conflict over whether this account of expression is accurate, except that many of those who object to being politically correct have their own terms which they would exclude, at least in some domains. It might merely be about how free we should be to express ourselves how we want, except that those who are against political correctness are also against some forms of self-expression. Instead, I suspect hesitancy about being politically correct occurs where people hold that the terms being excluded are necessary to (or express concepts necessary to) an accurate understanding of reality.
Another consequence of this view is the old view that we should be careful what we put in our minds, or what we sing, or otherwise what we do. That is, if expression forms us, forms our view of ourselves and reality, molds our desires and natures, then the words we sing and dance to mold us too. The movies we watch and the stories we tell, likewise, shape us. To endorse political correctness requires endorsing a view of entertainment as having an edificational dimension: a movie can corrupt us or edify us, and very few, if any, do neither. We can thus critique movies based on the account of reality and the good life which they tell, and both liberals and conservatives do. The objections of some liberals to casting decisions is quite like the objections of some Christians to sex scenes--both believe that consuming such media forms us in a bad way. The disagreement is merely as to what is good and bad in entertainment. What does edifying speech look like? That is the question raised in the conflict over politically correct speech.
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