Worldview is back

27 Apr Filed under Course Work.
Part 1 of 6 in the series Worldview: Bridging Enlightenment and Postmodern Epistemologies
A version of this paper was presented at the 2008 South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society Society conference on Oct 10, 2008.

You may not have noticed, but Worldview is back.  The concept, which is a little more that two hundred years old, was heavily discussed by philosophers in the 1800s.  Then the conversation died down. But now Worldview appears to be reasserting itself.  There are books advocating for and against particular Worldviews.  There are organizations devoted in developing facilitating improved Worldviews.  The field of education has recognized Worldview as well.   In an essay devoted to understanding generation differences in students Comes (2004) asserts, “two powerful forces – history and popular culture—play an important role in shaping the values, beliefs, attitudes and worldviews of individuals and groups.” (Coomes, 18, emphasis mine).   Unfortunately, there is no elaboration as to what is a student’s Worldview, and how it is different than a student’s values, beliefs, and attitudes.  Researchers are now using Worldview to measure student behavior.  It even has been the subject of some recently published studies.  In 2007 the results of research (Coll, Zalaquett) concerning the relationship between students and their satisfaction with their advising revealed that students who had a similar worldview as their advisor were more satisfied with the advice they received.   In June of this year, a study (Coll, Draves) was published linking university students’ optimism to their worldview.

So, Worldview is back, which begs certain questions.  What is Worldview?  How is it formed? and What does it have to do with learning?   The New Oxford American Dictionary simply defines Worldview as “a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.”    So is Worldview philosophical? a “Philosophy-Lite,” one might say?  Earlier, I mentioned the assertion that history and popular culture shape worldview.  Is Worldview then a cultural product, like technology?  Is it a commodity that is consumed? The two studies I mentioned used Assessment Instruments developed by psychologists.   Is Worldview a new taxonomy of personality?  A Myers-Briggs for the 21st century?

My thesis is that Worldview is best understood as reflection of the deepest commitments of an individual.  These commitments  work to shape a person’s life, and, they, in turn, are shaped by a person’s life.  These commitments may be consciously or unconsciously held.  However, because of the very nature of commitment, Worldview speaks of one’s faithfulness to a particular vision of reality.   It is my position that this definition of Worldview helps explains the ongoing debate concerning Epistemology.   However, this view uniquely gives dignity to both sides of the epistemic debate.   It validates many of the Postmodern indictments concerning the Enlightenment, while at the same time, raising significant issues for Postmodernists to address.

In this series I shall summarize the major conflict between Modern Epistemologies, contrasting Enlightenment with the Postmodern.  I’ll follow with a history of Worldview, demonstrating that the history of the concept reflects the epistemic commitments of the philosopher and the era.  Finally, I’ll conclude with some implications for educators.

The Modern Epistemic Debate

27 Apr Filed under Course Work.
Part 2 of 6 in the series Worldview: Bridging Enlightenment and Postmodern Epistemologies

Philosophy seeks to grasp, to make sense of, the reality we all experience.  We recognize that there is great unity in reality but that there is all great diversity.  How is it that unity and diversity coexist?  To try to answer these questions, Philosophers develop theories.  Epistemology is those theories concerning knowledge.   Epistemology tries to provide answers to the questions about how and when one can say he or she “knows.”  Epistemic theories can roughly be seen as one of two categories, theories about justification and theories of formation.   Theories of Justification attempt to validate claims of knowledge. They situate knowledge within reality.  They serve to separate knowledge from opinion.   Theories of formation attempt to resolve the relationship of the components that make up knowledge.     These theories are complex, but if we were to back away far enough, as if we are in plane flying over a landscape and looking down from 30,000 feet, we would see three large areas, which for my purposes, we will call Reason, Experience and finally Faith.  Epistemology is interested in understanding the relationship of these realms, as all three make claims to contribute to Knowledge and advance particular theories of Justification.  Finally, theories of Justification and Formation are tightly bound, so in some sense they stand or fall together.

It is very difficult to sum up the debate about knowledge between philosophers in the Modern era, from the period of time we call Enlightenment, roughly the start of the eighteenth century, through today, what we call Postmodern.  But this is exactly what Richard Rorty (1999) does so eloquently in an essay entitled Relativism: Finding and Making.  Rorty1 bemoans the fact that he, like other philosophers such as Heideggar, James, and even the celebrated educational philosopher John Dewey, have been labeled “relativists” (xvi, xix)  When in short, all he and the others have done is point out that the major source of tension in the history of Western civilization, all the imperialism, the tyranny and the privileged power, forced homogeny, just about all of it, can be traced back to the pesky epistemic theory of Foundationalism.
Foundationalism is the theory that says that in order for a claim of knowledge to be justified, it must be tied to something that is ultimately undeniable.   It needs to be backed up by something concrete.  One can hear an appeal to this theory in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”  What Jefferson is saying is that his claim is associated with something authoritative, something that is fundamental, something basic.  Historically, Nature had been deemed the source of this Foundation.  You could claim justification by appealing to Nature.  One’s Experiences and one’s Reason were understood to  work together to discern Nature’s light.  However, during the Enlightenment, a major change took place.  Philosophers recognized that most claims of knowledge are not undeniable, rather they were inferential.  Let me explain. I claim it is a nice Fall day.  I claim this because I can detect the temperature from my senses and I have experiences that I can draw on that tell me when it’s like this, it’s in between Summer and Winter.  Also, it is sunny out, so it must be day.  But, in reality, my senses and my experiences are not so reliable.  They can be deceived.  I could be kidnapped, drugged, dropped off in some Hollywood studio.  When I awake, I sense the temperature, I see the sun, but all of it a sham.  This is the premise of the Movie, The Truman Show.  Truman is living an inferential life.   This idea is terrifying. But Foundationalism say that if I work hard enough at peeling back the inferences, eventually I’ll hit something that is bedrock.  And this is exactly what Truman attempts.  He pursues particular inferences that don’t match up, and eventually, the whole facade crumbles, and the Truth is revealed and he is Free. Free from his Hollywood studio, that is.   This really is an old story. It goes all the way back to Plato.  Though the cast was very different.

Foundationalism, however, is not devoid of issues.  Because knowledge is considered to be ultimately grounded in something that is self-evident, it is theoretically equally accessible to each and every person, to all of humanity.   But of course, that is not the reality we experience.  In case you haven’t noticed,  humans are often not in agreement. There are multiple and competing claims of truth.   Indeed, even two individuals with very similar experiences, having been born in the same time period, undergoing similar life events, disagree on a great many matters.  Therefore, something has to explain why it is that some people “get” the self-evident stuff, while others do not.   What is it? The answer to this question, advanced by Plato and thus changing the course of Western history, is, of course, Reason.   Some people are simply more reasonable than others.   And so, it only follows that if society were to simply submit to the knowledge claims of its most celebrated Rationalists, the Philosopher King, then the disagreements would disappear.  Everyone in society would be Free to be happy. It really is that simple.   Now, getting the irrational people to go along with it, that’s a different issue.   There are some who have a dose of Reason, and the King will be able to appeal to it, but there will be others who are, shall we say, “lacking in Reason,” and will ramble on about how their Experiences inform them that this is not a good idea.   We may have to deal more harshly with them.  We may even have to deceive them, but it will be for the common good.   When the Philosopher, who via his Reason has direct access to Truth with a Capital T, is in charge, members of society will be steered away from pursuing untrustworthy experiences, one’s that don’t match up with reality, like poetry.  Imaginative experiences that would wreck civilization.  Instead, the citizenry will be content in their fixed positions in society.  They will experience True Freedom.

Hence we see that Foundationalism reflects a major commitment, a faith, in the trustworthiness of Reason.  This is not to say that Experience is not important, it is just not nearly are reliable and as worthy of our trust as Reason.   Foundationalism and its partner, the Correspondence Theory of Truth, have been epistemic constants in Western Civilization since Plato.(Heck)  As the historian Alfred Whitehead noted, “A safe generalization is that all of Western philosophy has been a footnote to Plato.”   And, in footnote fashion, many consider faith-based knowledge, especially Monotheisms like Christianity, as versions of Plato’s theories.

In contrast, Postmodern Epistemologists such as Rorty, argue that there is nothing that is self-evident. Everything must be tested to determine its merit.  Is it worthy of my trust? Justification is not found in something independent of the object, rather it is found in the relationship of the object to me. It is based on my experiences with the object.   Instead of the theory of Foundationalism, Postmodernists offer up the theory of Pragmatism.  Did it work? Did it make me more Free? Did it make me happy? Instead of the story of humanity slowly but systematically using Reason to find Freedom via Truth, Rory argues, it is better to see a story of humanity making their way in the universe, making Freedom, through the process of trial and error. (CITE)   The problem with having so much trust in Reason, they point out, is that you think you can know the future.  You think you know the outcome.  And so you declare some experiences completely off limits.  But what about Imagination? What about Creativity? Sometimes strange and wonderful and very unexpected things occur.   Outcomes are often different than anticipated.  When you deny humanity new experiences, opportunities for change, you deny humanity the potential for new knowledge.  Knowledge is not our perceiving nature’s light, enabling us to discern right from wrong. Rather, knowledge is humanity’s toolbox, from which we shape tools for our particular task, the task of progress.  It is good if it works.  If it works, it’s truthful.    In response to this claim, the Foundationalists cringe at what they see as a call to fumble in the dark, to hack blindly at reality and at each other.  Ultimately they accuse the Postmodern of nihilism, of believing that nothing has intrinsic value.    “Not so,” the Postmodernist retort, “change, transformation” has intrinsic value.   Hence we see that Postmodernity has a different epistemic commitment.   Allegiances have switched.  Reason is no longer deemed so trustworthy. In fact, there is a suspicion of those who make rationalistic claims.  Experience is more likely to provide us with what we need.

This gulf between Enlightenment and Postmodern epistemology, between a commitment to Reason and a commitment to Experience,  appears large.   How exactly did we get here?   According to Rorty what ultimately led to Western civilization’s break with Foundationalism were the unresolvable claims and paradoxes, made plain in Rationalism.  Rationalism, the claim that Reason alone could aspire to absolute Knowledge, was at its zenith during the Enlightenment.   Rorty specifically fingers Immanuel Kant and his idealism as the epitome of the absurdity of the Rationalistic claims.     Which is Ironic, since Kant is where we begin the story of Worldview.

Worldview: A Brief History

29 Apr Filed under Course Work.
Part 3 of 6 in the series Worldview: Bridging Enlightenment and Postmodern Epistemologies

Weltanschuung

The word Worldview is what is known as a loanword.  It is an English version of a German word Weltanschuung. It literally means “World” and “Perception.” (Naugle, 64).  In 1790  Immanuel Kant coined the word to describe our perception of the world that we experience through our senses. (Naugle, 59)   Kant only used it once.    What is important to note was that Kant was not attempting a theory of Worldview.  He did not elaborate.  It was coined in passing.  While Kant did not unpack the idea, his student, Johann Gottlieb Fitche (1762-1814) did. Fitche employed the word in his first work, contrasting the human and the Divine’s perception of reality. (Naugle, 60).  He was basically contrasting the human sense of reality to what he imagined was God’s sense of reality.   I want to hold this conceptualization of Worldview up as a product of the Enlightenment’s commitment to Reason.    Experience is necessary and is good, but it is limited. It is particular to a person.  However, with the work of Reason, sense can be made of experience.1  Even sense, on the scale of eternity, can be grasped.  Thus a philosopher, such a Fitche, has the boldness to use Reason, to explore the experiences, the Worldview, of Divinity.

A second meaning of Worldview was developed by a friend of Fitche, the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) who took the idea and ran with it, and in the process changed its meaning.  In this view, Worldview shares the structures of rationalism, yet does not have access to the universal.   According to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, Schelling transformed the word to mean “a self-realized, productive as well conscious way of apprehending and interpreting the universe of beings.”(quoted in Naugle, 60).    Note three things.  First: self-realized, productivity.  For Schelling, Worldview was subjective and active.  Secondly: consciousness.  For Schelling, the activity was known to the person.  This then makes it the product of reflection.  It puts in the category of philosophy and hence subject to rationality.  Meaning, you can examine it and seek to comprehend it.   Thirdly, “apprehension” AND “interpretation.”   Here we find that Worldview is not just experiences which intellect must manage and order, but rather the experiences directly influence the intellect.  This is an important change, for in a period of less than fifty years, Worldview is being used to challenge the extreme Rationalism of the Enlightenment.   I take this to signify a recognition that Rationalism had failed to account for Absolute Knowledge.  From Schelling, the world spread throughout the philosophers of Europe and over the course of 50 years Worldview was heavily debated.  Most notable were the treatments by Hegel, Kierkegaard, Goethe, Dilthey and Neitzsche.

Kierkegaard’s interaction with Weltanshuuang is worth noting.   Kierkegaard was deeply disturbed by the Rationalistic claims to absolute Knowledge.  His view was that the realm of Absolute knowledge was Faith.  Reason, he concluded, had little access to Faith.  Indeed, Reason’s attempts to access Faith were deemed destructive to Faith.  However, Experience was different.  Experience did have access to Faith.  And so Reason could only get at Faith in a productive way through Experience. Therefore, Kierkegaard considered Worldview as a way to legitimate the claims of Faith.  After Kierkegaard, then, philosophers began to treat rationalistic ideas, such as scientific thought, with their claims to universality, as coming from the Realm of Reason.  In contrast, Worldview becomes an Experiential domain, one that is seen containing the relative, the personal and the historical. (Wolters, 1989, 15)

I previously mentioned Marten Heidegger (1889-1976), but now I want to return to him, for his contribution is significant.    Heideggar wanted to interact with Things in of themselves; he wanted to know and experience pure Being.   The difficulty was that interaction is two-sided.  It involves Him. And It involved The Other. His attempts to access pure Being were always thwarted because he was always brought his preconceptions to the interaction.  His preconception impose on the Other.  What Heideggar wanted was a non-imposing way of taking the Other into consideration. He therefore rejected Reason as way to Pure Knowledge because thought always imposed structure.  Science, which has asserted itself as synonymous with philosophy, was the epitome of an imposing structure.  Following Kierkegaard, Heidegger differentiated Philosophy from Worldview, but rejected Worldview as well.  Yes, Worldview is relative, historically and culturally influenced. Yes, it was open to Faith.  But ultimately, it contained the seed of structures.  I read Heideggar as someone who differentiated between spirit and religion.   Spirit, like Being, was pure, while Religion was dogmatic and institutional. And Wordview is where the religiosity of faith dwelt.   And so Worldview was both controlling and limiting.     In contrast to Worldview, Heideggar promoted  Phenomenology, a hope and method of seeing things truly as themselves, as a way of breaking free from the entrapment of both Science and Worldview. (Naugle, 135).

POSTMODERN: EXPERIENCE

We are now in the 1930s in our Worldview history lesson.  And for the most part, the talk of Worldview dies down.  It is being discussed, but not by the philosophical community.  I’ll return to that later.  I first want to talk about how Worldview made a comeback.  Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1970, contributed to the revival of Worldview. (Naugle, 196).   In his book, Kuhn posited that major advances in Science should  be understood as humans undergoing paradigm shifts.  These shifts were best understood not as having uncovered a new level of truth, but as major refinements to the best tool humanity has ever developed, language. Our vocabulary is a storage mechanism for knowledge and our vehicle for knowledge sharing.   However, when we find that our language is no longer effective, when we find our vocabulary no longer facilitates our progress,  we need to ditch it and develop new.  But this hard. Very hard.  There are whole conceptions of reality resting on particular vocabularies.  Vocabularies carry historical and cultural values.  People locate their identity and their experiences within particular vocabularies, and therefore resist abandoning them.  Therefore, the heroes of science are the bold individuals, like Copernicus, Darwin and Freud, who were brave enough to ditch old tools when they ceased to work (Rorty, CITE).  They were willing to experiment with new vocabularies. They were not afraid to go into uncharted territory.  The changes these individuals proposed were fiercely resisted on two sides, by the predominate scientific community and often in the name of religion.  Hence we see a relationship of Experience to Reason and Faith.  Both Reason and Faith contain structures which are always resistant to change.  But Change is what is needed, and Change is brought about by, oddly enough, by those who truly Experiment.

BEYOND KUHN

Kuhn’s thesis was widely accepted, and has been applied outside of science.  Indeed, for Rorty, the real heros are not scientists, but rather Poets. Rorty writes “A sense of human history as the history of successful metaphors would let us see the poet, in the generic sense of the maker of new words, the shaper of new languages, as the vanguard of the species.” (CIS 20).  Poets are the individuals who are employing their imagination and are creating new vocabularies which eventually trickle their way down in to the nooks and crannies of society.  Poets inspire individuals to experience the new and to throw off the old.  The story of humanity is the story of beings who have been able to change.  Note that this is a complete reversal from Plato’s view, who eyed Poets suspiciously! For Rorty to be structural is to resistant to change.  Philosophy contain structures of Rationality and Worldview contain the Dogmatic Structures of Experience.  This structure is bound in the language, and so all languages must eventually be ditched.2  However, Faith-based discourse, and religion specifically, is seen as the epitome of destructive force.  Religious vocabularies are “archaic and degenerate.” (CITE)     Thus, the Postmodern Epistemologist eyes Worldview suspiciously.

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1.Westphal (1990) elaborates on the  extreme nature of Kant’s and Fitche’s epistemic commitment to Reason, arguing that they ultimately came to the conclusion that the moral was best located in the philosophical. (205)

2. Rorty argues “the vocabulary of Enlightenment rationalism, although it was essential to the beginning of liberal democracy, has become an impediment to the preservation and progress of democratic societies.” (CIS 44)

Worldview: Acknowledging Faith’s Role in Knowledge

29 Apr Filed under Course Work.
Part 4 of 6 in the series Worldview: Bridging Enlightenment and Postmodern Epistemologies

I have contrasted the Enlightenment and Postmodern Epistemologies, while at the same time developing the story of the concept of Worldview.  I now want to advance a different conceptualization of Worldview, one that I think does a better job  justly recognizing the contributions of  Reason, Experience, and Faith to Knowledge.   At the same time Heideggar was writing, a Dutch philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) was also wrestling with Worldview.  In 1932 Dooyeweerd wrote a book entitled, “The New Critique of Theoretical Knowledge” in which he asserted that Reason was not Neutral.  This, of course, was not a radical new claim.  However, the explanation he provided was significant in that Worldview1 played a key role.  Worldview, Dooyeweerd argued, is best understood as a function of the Realm of Faith.  And it operates in a religious manner on Reason and Experience.  I want to quickly unpack his claim.    I take Dooyeweerd to mean that the nature of Faith is commitment.  It is an allegiance to something, setting apart of something as unique. If I am a committed fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, then my allegiance lies with the Steelers.  I may enjoy watching other football teams play. But when it comes down to it and I have to cheer for a particular team, I side with my beautiful Gold and Black Steelers.  I wave my terrible towel. Doing so demonstrates my committments. It marks me as one of the faithful.  Even when they are down, if I am committed to their success, I am a pulling for them, my hope is oriented toward them.  Even before they take the field, and even though their opponent is 10 and 0, if I am steadfast in my confidence of their success,  if I am committed to seeing them through, I am faithful.  I have a vision of them winning the Super Bowl.  And I interpret their actions according to that commitment. The degree to which my commitment is strong is the degree to which others say I am a religious fan.      Worldviews are religious because the nature of commitment is that it demands its adherent to be faithful.

THE HEART

According to Dooyeweerd the religious impulse is part of human nature.  It is not a component of mind, therefore rationalistic, nor is it a component of body, therefore subject alone to our experiences. Rather it is located in what Dooyeweerd called the heart.     Whether we are conscious of it or not, we have set our hearts on something. In the words of Woody Allen, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”  The implications of our religious impulse is that humans are never neutral in our position toward Reason and Experiences.  We have some degree of commitment to them.  Reason and Experience, he argued, could never be free from the commitments of an individual.

RELATIONAL COMMITMENT TO THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWLEDGE

Commitment, however, is relational.  If I am a fan of the Steelers, I may attend a game and yell at the top of my lungs.  And the Team will respond to my commitment. A team plays very differently at Home then Away.  Very differently in front of fans then in front of empty stands.  The Team will respond to the Fans.  And the relationship goes the other way as well.  If I am a Fan and my team plays terribly, year after year after year, then one can anticipate that my commitment may falter.  But what might really damage my commitment is if a Team did something that I fundamentally thought was at odds with the rules of the game.  Finally, and oddly enough, if my Team was so successful that no other Team even had a chance, then I might actually start to cheer for the underdog!  All this to say is commitment is not static, they are very dynamic.   They interact with Reason and Experience.   Our Faith is influenced by Reason and by Experience, and in return Reason and Experience influence Faith.  Thus  Faith, Reason and Experience are not in opposition.  They are complementary. No realm can ever provide absolute Knowledge because of their dynamic relationship.  But my the very nature of Faith, we posses a commitment to one area of Knowledge.  We suppose that that one is better than the other, and that the key to one lies within the other.

If we are willing to accept the idea that one’s Worldview is determined by the individual commitments of a person, what accounts for the presence of periods where large groups of people shared a commitment?  Again, because of dynamic functioning of commitment, Worldviews are not only prescriptive, but also descriptive. (Olthuis)  That is to say that our Worldview reflects our experiences, and our experiences are historically and culturally bound.  We share an environment and resources with our neighbors.  We develop organizations to facilitate our interactions, economics and governments.  We share communicative techniques, we use the similar language , read similar books, watch similar TV. We share a cultural which reflect our commitments.  Not only is our worldview shaping how we live, it is being shaped by how we live.   This conception of Worldview, more than any other, brings dignity to the Realms of Knowledge and respect for different ways of knowing. Each realm is worthy of commitment, but one no more than the other.

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1.According to Wolters (1985), Abraham Kuyper, and Dooyeweerd, his disciple,  used “Worldview” Lifeview” and “World and Life View” almost interchangeably.  Dooyeweerd, in his later writing, uses “Religious Ground Motive” as a consistent substitute for all three.

Reductionism in Epistemology

29 Apr Filed under Course Work.
Part 5 of 6 in the series Worldview: Bridging Enlightenment and Postmodern Epistemologies

What makes Dooyeweerd’s theory of Worldview additionally attractive is that it offers an explanation as to the Rationalism of Modernity.  When the commitment is left unchecked, it threatens to become fanatical.  And when it does it works to completely undermine and discount everything but what it favors.  I may be a committed fan, but it would be unwise to dismiss the other team completely.  Moreover, it would be madness if I attempted to recruit members of the opposing team to act as double agents.  What would be my goal?  If I were completely successful, then all members of the opposite team would really be shadowy members of my team.  And the game they would play would be a sham.

PRIVILEGING REASON

Starting with Plato, Western Civilization has awarded Reason a privileged status.   Experience had value, it was understood to make a contribution to Knowledge. However, Reason’s contribution was valued more.  The commitment to a particular aspect of Knowledge was obvious.  And for more than a thousand years this commitment was held in check by Faith.  Starting with the Renaissance, however, Reason was seen as the source of productivity.  It yielded major advancements in Knowledge.  At the same time, the contributions to Knowledge that Experience and Faith provided were devalued.   Finally Experience and Faith were devalued to a point where it was basically denied they made any real contribution.  Rather, any contribution they made actually originated in Reason.  We should recognize this as Reductionism.   Reductionism is that philosophical act of denying the diversity of reality.   The Reductionists says there is only one “real” reality,  and the diversity we experience are really only shadows of that one reality.   In Plato’s theory of Forms and in Aristotle’s Essence you will hear the ringing of Reductionism.  You will hear it also in the Reason of Descartes and Kant.  But let us not think that this is the lone problem of Western Civilization.  You will hear it in the Pantheism of Eastern thought if you listen carefully.    The commitment of one Realm of Knowledge over all the others.  And ultimately, if left unchecked, to deny a diversity and to locate all Realms inside one.  It is folly to declare that one particular Realm of Knowledge is the source of the others.   But, says Dooyeweerd, this is natural working out of our heart’s desire.

Is there any validity to the Theory of Reductionism?  In 1794 Kant writes Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and argues that his Faith, Christianity, if it is to survive, if it is to be acceptable, needed to become more rationalistic. (Benson, 74).   During the same period, in America we find Thomas Jefferson cutting up his Bible, eliminating passages containing miracles and even the resurrection of Jesus.   Such passages were deemed incompatible with Reason and therefore must have been in err.  In mattered little that passages were first-hand accounts of the experiences of the authors.  Jefferson could not give them the benefit of the doubt.   Rather than question the trustworthiness of his Reason, Jefferson, like so many of the Enlightenment, questioned the trustworthiness of others’ experiences.   And of course, we hear Descartes subjecting his entire existence to his reason, finally concluding that the only thing he was sure of was that he had a thought.  Which reminds me of a joke.  Descartes is in bar and the bartender asks him if he would like a drink.  He responds, “I think not.” and instantly he vanishes.    If you do not get this joke, ask yourself  “Where did he go?”  The Answer is: “He vanished, he went “poof,” he ceased to exist.”  Why did he cease to exist? Well, because earlier he claimed “I think, therefore I am.”  Thus, when he thought not, he became not.    This joke, I think, is funny and profound.  It speaks to the extremism and ridiculousness of the commitment of the Rationalist. 1  And it is the reality of reductionism.

Dooyeweerd argued that reality refuses reductionism. (CITE) It cannot be reduced.  It is a totality and a coherent diversity.   You cannot completely separate Reason from Experience. Nor can you separate Reason from Faith, and Experience from Faith.  Nor can you attribute one as the source of the others.  When one attempts reductionism, one encounters unresolvable claims.  Thus, Dooyeweerd points to Rationalism and points out the paradoxes.  Dooyeweerd rejected the Rationalistic claim of Objective Truth.  Truth with a capital “T” can not be absolutely known.   Moreover, he rejects Foundationalism, because nothing can be perceived in and of itself.   Nothing is truly self-evident to all through Reason.

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1.Westphal elaborates on the extreme nature of Kant and Fitche epistemic commitment to Reason, ultimately coming to the conclusion that the moral was best located in the philosophical. (205)

The Postmodern Switch

29 Apr Filed under Course Work.
Part 6 of 6 in the series Worldview: Bridging Enlightenment and Postmodern Epistemologies

The radical Reductionist attempts of the Enlightenment, however, did have a positive affect.  It encouraged a larger cultural switch in allegiance.   In light  of the horrors of Modernity, we began to re-evaluate Knowledge.  The Postmodern era may mark a change in Worldview.  We are not so committed to Reason.  We have lost Faith in Reason.  Rather, we are more cognizant of the significant role of Experience.   We are becoming increasingly conscious of the impact of the history, culture and language in shaping Knowledge.    But might we also risk reductionism again?

The Devaluing of Rationality: Philosophy as Despair

Given the history of Western Epistemology and the human tendency towards reductionism, I think we can have insight into what the Postmodern reductionism might look like.  One can anticipate a radical devaluing of Reason, and especially of Philosophy.  In February, I attended, for the first time, the Southeast Philosophy of Education Society conference.  It was the 60th Annual Meeting, and prior to the President’s address, several scholars  took the stage for a retrospect. It was enjoyable to hear them swap great memories from past conferences.  It was great to hear the stories, some thirty years old. But one particular statement struck me.  James Van Patten of the University of Arkansas, asked everyone in the room, “Where are all the Educational Philosophers?”   I looked around the room.  There was a consensus that it was a small group. There was a sense that the society, and the field of educational philosophy in general, is not as vibrant and passionate as it was in the past.  Where are all the Educational Philosophers?

As a reader of the Postmodernist Richard Rorty, this question does not surprise me.   It is ironic that Rorty, a professional philosopher, eventually came to the conclusion that philosophy is not really that useful. (PSH 231-232)  For Rorty, Philosophy became more of a private pursuit and pleasure, much like his collection of orchids.  There was value in it; it made him happy.  But it was ill-suited to participate in the struggles for social and political gains.  I take this to mean that Rorty thought philosophy, like religion, was too dogmatic, too restrictive, too structured, too controlling.   There is a loss of hope in the good Rationality can do.  Rorty writes, “A turn away from narration and utopian dreams toward philosophy seems to me a gesture of despair.” (PSH 232) Notice here the radically devaluing of Reason.  It has little to contribute to Knowledge, rather, it works to undermine Experience.  Rorty fails to recognize that Pragmatism is built on a reductionist epistemology.

Reductionism in the Classroom

If we listen carefully, we will hear the murmurers of reductionism in the Postmodern commitment to Experience, in the zeal for transformation, for Change, in our Schools.  For example, Patrick Slattery (1995) makes the case for a new approach to Curriculum Development, one in which educators apply a different hermeneutic, curriculum as theological text.  Expounding on his meaning, he clearly advocates for an experiential-based knowledge over and above developing a reasoned, critical approach:

In the postmodern reflection on the school curriculum as theological text, the words “curriculum,” “theology,” and “text” are understood phenomenologically (emphasizing subjective consciousness and its intentional objects in their pure essence) rather than ontologically (emphasizing concrete natural objects studied in the abstract).   …From this postmodern perspective, the curriculum… is an interpretation of lived experiences rather than static courses of studies to be completed. (93)

Notice the “rather than.”  Slattery is adopting the same dualistic view of the structure of knowledge as Enlightenment educators, he is simply favoring what was once unfavored.  Our schools failed our children when we over-emphasized an objective, abstract understanding of reality.   We are right to correct this.  However, we should resist falling victim to the same tendency. The pendulum can swing both ways.  The same potential to fail future students exists by over-emphasizing an experiential, subjective understanding of reality.

The Radical Role of Worldview

Rorty wrote that dialog is good because we can fall victim to our blind spots,  “the sort of blind spots we all have – correctable not by increasing philosophical sophistication, but simply by having our attention called to the harm we have been doing without noticing we are doing it.”(PSH 236-7)  I admire this is sentiment.   We need to have our eyes opened to the affect of our commitments to a particular vision of reality, Worldview, has in all areas of our life.  We especially need to acknowledge the important role that commitment, that Faith, plays in our conception of Knowledge.  Our commitments, which flow from our heart, they are at the root of our vision of reality, including our concept of structure of Knowledge.   Therefore, our Worldview will also radically shape our classrooms and schools.

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