YOU KANT KNOW A MIRACLE

In my last posting, I brought up the effect that post modernism has had on critical theorists; that is, the strain of thought that has promoted the idea that we cannot be about the business of stating anything definitively about the world around us.  In their eyes, there seems to be a disconnect between what we see and what we know.  From where did this sort of thinking come?  Well, there is a line of thinkers stretching all the way back to the 1700s that laid the groundwork for this view.  It probably starts with David Hume, but this posting is going to share the thoughts of Immanuel Kant and his epistemology.

To establish the context a bit, there was an ongoing philosophical debate between philosophers who saw the way to seek truth was through the use of reason and those who counted on our ability to understand reality through perceptions.  Those who counted on reason saw our main tool in figuring out the nature of reality was our minds and the internal mechanizations we perform in our efforts to understand what is, be it the physical world or the supernatural world.  The second group, the empiricists, relied on their senses, what they saw, smelled, and/or tactilely felt.  This debate, in one form or another, has a long lineage.  One can consider the differences between Plato and Aristotle to be one version.  Anyway, it is into this backdrop that Kant contributed his thoughts.

With a nod to Hume, Kant accepted the former thinker’s claim that we cannot experience cause and effect relations.  From there, Kant’s argument begins by accepting and rejecting portions of both the reason based argument and the empiricists based argument.  He felt that in both these camps, there were understatement and overstatement.

Let us start with the empiricist side.  Kant claimed that we rely on our senses to “see” the world; it is through our senses that we acquire the material of our knowledge.  But immediately, our mind comes into play in that it provides the form in which the perceptions are received.  It is like water in a pitcher; the water conforms to the shape of the container.  So does the information our senses pick up; the mind shapes that information.  Some might use other analogies, such as the mind provides the “glasses” by which we view reality.  What is understood or registered in the mind is shaped by the mind in certain ways.  These ways do not, according to Kant, exist in reality, but are how we adopt the information.

So what does the mind add to this process?  Well, the mind is programmed to see the world through certain lenses (the glasses metaphor).  For one, we see things in terms of a certain context of space and time.  This framework he called “forms of intuition.”  We, according to Kant, cannot escape this disposition.  The framework imprints what is perceived and, if you will, translates the information into this language of time and space.  Kant likened this insight to the disruption Copernicus caused when he pointed out that the sun does not revolve around the earth, but that the earth revolves around the sun.  That bit of discovery had an enormous effect on how we saw reality.  Likewise, Kant felt understanding the mind’s function in defining how we saw reality equal to a Copernican Revolution. 

But the effect of the mind does not end there.  There is another inescapable disposition.  We see something happen and we automatically ask why it happened; in other words, we are disposed to look for cause and effect.  This claim is more in line with Hume’s contribution.  The important lesson is that there is a distinction between things as they are and things as they are to the person perceiving them.  Empiricists – that is scientists – today readily succumb to this claim.  They, in their research, do not contend that they discover cause and effect relations; they merely report correlation.  That is, they issue “X happens, Y happens” sort of statements – it is their theorizing that makes cause and effect contentions and even there, they are hypothesized.  They are never proffered as facts or truth and, ala Karl Popper, their job is to disprove assertions, not to prove them.

Are there any readily observable phenomena that indicate this disconnect to be true?  The cat example has been offered.[1]  Say there is a cat lying on the floor of a room and a ball rolls in her general direction.  What does the cat do?  Chances are, she will jump at it and begin to paw it around.  Now say an adult is sitting in that room and a ball rolls out; he or she is bound to question why this ball is rolling out here; who rolled it?  The mind of the cat shaped the information one way; the adult’s mind shaped it another way – same view, different mental operation.  A young child, on the other hand, will probably not do either.  He or she might just look at it, not knowing what to do.  Why?  Because the history of the child’s perceptions has not experienced this occurrence or anything like it before and hence, the information is novel.  There are no references to define what is happening.  His/her mind does not contain the material and, therefore, the information cannot be shaped.

An average person’s reason does not allow this lack of material to stymie its reasoning.  And with that, we enter another realm of this concern.  It seems that when confronted with novel or unperceivable aspects of our existence, assuming we have mostly worked out answers to most of our daily events, we still look for cause and effect.  Our reason might ask: where does reality come from; is it infinite; what is the fate of humankind?  Such questions ask about things we cannot perceive, but our reason – our mind – seeks cause and effect answers to such questions anyway.  The one question that drew a lot of concern from Kant was, is there a god?  Confronting this question, one is immediately aware that that question relates to a bit of potential reality we have not and cannot perceive.  Therefore, without being able to perceive the subject matter, we cannot “know” an answer.  We can believe in the existence of God only by faith.  And from all indications, Kant had a good dose of that.

I believe that what spurred a great deal of this line of questioning among philosophers during the years after the Enlightenment had to do with the Protestant Reformation.  Before this time, there was a good deal of uniform belief as to what constituted the real and a lot of that belief was defined by Catholic theology.  But once that was undercut, not by just one set of opposing religious views, but by a slew of them, the threshold was past.  Truth no longer was the inspired message from above, but to be “constructed” through our individual effort, via a good conscience, to determine the answers to the questions posed by our existence.  In that pursuit, we have our own, individual attempts to make sense of it all.  To do that, we had to work with the tools we had/have and, according to Kant, that was/is our ability to perceive and to reason.  Each has its role.  But these roles take place at the individual’s level and are apt to not only be inconsistent to the results of others, but also to be inconsistent for the individual over time.  People change their minds about what they believe to be true all the time. 

This quest to figure out how we formulate what we “know” or believe is still an active area of concern.  Recently, among psychologists and other social scientists, they have gained, for example, a newfound respect for emotions and their role in our reasoning processes.  It is this type of questioning we still are actively asking and investigating.  For practical and intellectual reasons, many find this questioning fascinating.

---

[1] Gaarder, J.  (1996).  Sophie’s world:  A novel about the history of philosophy.  New York, NY:  Berkley Books.  This is a delightful review of western philosophers. 

FORMAL CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL THEORY

In this posting, I will reuse some already posted material.  I don’t usually do this – I think I did it once before – but there is a good reason for doing it here.  Early in the history of this blog, I reviewed the critical theory construct.  I identified it as the antithesis to the prevailing construct, the natural rights perspective.  Over numerous postings, I described and explained the elements of critical theory, not in order to be the definitive source of what it is, but to give you a good sense of what that theory was about and how it was influencing the field of civics education.  In addition, I critiqued the construct.  In this latter effort, I used Eugene Meehan’s criteria.[1]  I did not cite each criterion, one by one, and apply it to critical theory.  Instead, I used the criteria in a holistic way and shared what I believed was useful and not useful about critical theory.  In order to be complete, I would like this posting to be more formal in my evaluation and address some of the Meehan criteria more directly and unequivocally.  But first – and here comes past posted material – let me remind you – for first timers, introduce you to – Meehan’s criteria (plus two):

Meehan's criteria were designed to evaluate theories or explanations in the social sciences; i.e., he, in effect, gives us a set of questions to ask of models, theories, or constructs that serve to guide research in the social sciences.  The criteria can be summarized by the following list of concepts and their related questions:

·        Comprehension:  Does the construct explain as many phenomena as possible which are related to the area of concern?

·        Power:  Does the construct control the explanatory effort by being valid and complete in its component parts and in the relations between those parts?

·        Precision:  Does the construct specifically and precisely treat its concepts, making them clear in their use?

·        Consistency or Reliability:  Does the construct explain its components and their relations the same way time after time?

·        Isomorphism:  Does the construct contain a one to one correspondence with that portion of reality it is trying to explain?

·        Compatibility:  Does the construct align with other responsible explanations of the same phenomena?

·        Predictability:  Does the construct predict conditions associated with the phenomena in question?

·        Control:  Does the construct imply ways of controlling the phenomena in question?

In addition, I have added a couple of educational concerns:

·        Abstraction Level:  Is the construct’s abstraction of such a nature that students will be able to comprehend it?

·        Motivation:  Is the construct and its content sufficiently interesting that students will be motivated to study it?

So, how does the critical theory construct stack up against these criteria?  Here’s my judgement.  As I have tried to stress in my review of the construct, critical theory lacks precision.  For example, a main concept utilized by that construct, exploitation, and how the writers, who publish in this vein, use it, seem to lack any clear sense of what exactly is meant by it.  I used, in my descriptive text of earlier date, Johan Galtung’s definition at one point, but then provided another definition elsewhere.  Galtung’s view is that exploitation exists whenever any group in society is not advancing economically as rapidly as any other group.  So, theoretically, one can have a society in which everyone is advancing (all boats are being lifted), but if there is any group not rising as quickly as the rest, then that constitutes exploitation.  Paulo Freire, a writer I reviewed extensively in my description of how this construct can potentially affect civics curriculum, writes of the psychological aspects of exploitation.  Elsewhere, I chose a more restrictive definition.  That is, my definition retained, as a main factor, a lack of equality, but was more sensitive to the forces of supply and demand and what happens when policy makers simply ignore them in the pursuit of a more just system.  The final effect, with all these various views, is a serious lack of precision.  This is because one is uncertain as to what various writers mean by exploitation.  Surely, some cases of unjust treatment are squarely examples of exploitation, but there are some that one questions.  For example, a lot of questioning can be brought up regarding the distinction between cases when people need to share in any responsibility for their own plights; where is the line between unjust treatment and irresponsible behavior?  I’m sure this can be sorted out, but since there is no clear, singular expression of this construct in general, clarity in many of its expositions is illusive.

My foremost concern with this construct is its lack of comprehensiveness.  That is, there are other concerns that civics should address other than the exploitation of disadvantaged groups.  Yes, this overall concern should not be shortchanged in our civics curriculum, but good citizens need to know about other issues as well.  There are concerns over the defense of our nation, about the health of our economy, about technological changes and opportunities, about crime, civility, health care in general, relations with other nations, relations within our communities; the list goes on.  Being so focused on the mistreatment of the disadvantaged leaves little time for other legitimate areas of concern that a good citizenry neglects at its own peril.

In terms of predictability – and this refers to that branch of critical theory that relies more directly on Marxian thought – there has not been the predicted unfolding of historical forces the great thinker predicted back in the mid-1800s.  Perhaps enough time has not evolved for the Marxian scenario to play out; that is, maybe the inevitable overthrow by the working classes is yet to transpire.  But if nothing else, this points to this lack of precision or reliability.  More likely, it points to a lack of predictability.  I just don’t believe Marx was correct on this one. 

Along with this lack of being able to give us a dependable overall view of how our politics have evolved or promises to evolve, we can also cite other criteria in which this construct goes wanting.  These include precision, power, reliability, and compatibility.  This is particularly true for those who advance what I named, way back when, “critical pedagogy 2.0” or the reconceptualism branch of critical theory.  Let me just point out that most educators who ascribe to critical theory adhere to this line of thought.  A quip that I believe summarizes this view is to just marry Marxian thought with natural rights biases that idolize the individual and you have reconceptualism.  With reconceptualism and its reliance on postmodernism and post structuralism, there is a call for self-referentiality and a rejection of any grand narratives or ideologies.  It is subjectivism on “steroids.”  With this view, there is little hope for any resulting sense of a constant perception of what is or the desire to find such a perception.  Adherents call for a serious approach to seeking the truth through historical interpretation that relies heavily on contextualizing the information gathered and delving into subjective forces about historical characters and the researchers themselves.  This is far more complicated then what I can get into here, but what results is a less anchored sense of knowing anything.  Hence, such criteria as precision, power, reliability, compatibility become, for all intents and purposes, seriously less relevant.  The construct leaves a civics teacher, a person charged with teaching a subject matter that is quite prevalent in people’s lives, having very concrete effects, with a very uneasy sense.  There is a real government out there; there are very real consequences of what that government does, and the reactions that people report, as to those effects, are not so varied and discontinuous in content, at least within identifiable groups.  In addition, the action of politics is to funnel demands into singular policy.  An approach that renders the perception of citizens scattered and based on near total self-perceptions undermines any meaning of citizenship and a community of interests. 

I believe reconceptualism and its supportive philosophies have insightful contributions to make.  It is a well-spring of concerns by which, if implemented, is a source of legitimate criticism of “established truths,” be they the product of scientific research or other sources.  After all, how many scientific “truths” have been proved false?  Of course, a lot of that is a betrayal of a truly scientific approach, for a true scientist is about trying to prove those “truths” to be false.  Instead, we have had a recurring stream of what Bill Bryson reports, for example, when it comes to paleontology study:

Finally, but perhaps above all, human nature is a factor in all this.  Scientists have a natural tendency to interpret finds in the way that most flatters their stature.  It is a rare paleontologist indeed who announces that he has found a cache of bones but that they are nothing to get excited about.  Or as John Reader understatedly observes in the book Missing Links, “It is remarkable how often the first interpretations of new evidence have confirmed the preconceptions of its discoverer.”[2]

So, I get the point; science has been used for a variety of reasons beyond truth seeking.  People have used it to advance without much warrant their careers and it has been used as a political weapon at all levels of social interaction, from the clinician who seeks a convenient course of action to a national set of politicians seeking some advantage for some constituency.  But let us not radicalize this concern.  Let us be aware and follow our reliance on science with a dose of skepticism, but let us avoid overdosing.  In terms of choosing content for a classroom, a school, a school district, a national curriculum, one needs more meat on that bone than what reconceptualism provides.  We need to be able to say more than, “Oh, that’s how I see it today” or anything that resembles that type of perspective.

With that, I complete my critique of critical theory.  I believe the construct offers serious insights and a much needed emphasis on the plight of those who do not share in our largesse.  It is also applicable at appropriate abstraction levels so that secondary students can grasp the main thrust of its content.  In my previous treatment of this construct, I did question its assumed motivational quality even among students who might be victimized by exploitation.  We witness too many citizens who flock to the very politicians who do not address their economic disadvantages, but are lured by more non-economic factors such as religious or nationalistic messaging.  But overall, I hope you agree, that I am a sympathetic admirer of what critical theorists have been able to accomplish even in the case of reconceptualism; after all, I do view the theories I have reviewed in this blog as constructs; that is, a constructed view of the truth – a reconceptualist notion.  But in the end, I am not an adherent.  If you wish to read more of what critical pedagogues have to say, let me suggest some names.  I believe these writers and their works would be a good start in delving into critical literature.  This list of writers includes, of course, Paulo Freire, but also Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Jonathan Kozol, Ivan Illich, John Holt, and Ira Shor (who actually based his writings on his own classroom experiences).  There are many others.

---

[1] Meehan, E. J. (1969). Explanations in social science: A system paradigm. Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press.

[2] Bryson, B.  (2003).  A short history of nearly everything.  New York, NY:  Broadway Books, p. 442.