Selected Readings 2018-2019

Wasted by Frank Furedi

A polemic against progressive interdisciplinary and child-centric education that would make for an interesting counterpoint to prevailing pedagogical philosophies if it wasn’t so badly put together. Furedi’s main point is that education is about passing on a body of knowledge from generation to the next and requires adult authority to work; he cites declining standards of classroom behaviour as a symptom of a pedagogical culture that has forgotten the value of adults as mentors and leaders. This is perhaps an understandable worry since some of the more radical proponents of ‘child centred’ education can sound as if they want teachers to have their role paired down from knowledgeable instructors to that of a glorified babysitter.

Unfortunately, Furedi’s attempt to critique interdisciplinary education involves recycling the lie that such an education necessitates the abandonment of traditional subjects; and many of his sources which ‘prove’ the existence of the trends he complains about are nothing more than hyperbolic tabloid articles. It’s nice to get a sense of what ‘the other side’ thinks if you are a progressive educator but empirically and philosophically, this book is a bit of a let down.

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Exciting at first, then dark. A young boy caught up in gang culture is desperate to prove that he is man while simultaneously being too traumatised to ever really grow up - this is the picture painted as we follow Pinkie in his attempts to keep a murder under wraps. Vivid and heart-breaking portraits of both desperate and beautiful people punctuate a gripping thriller.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Witty and incredibly astute in its observations of the inner lives of humans. It’s somewhat funny, highly caustic and extremely cynical, enough so that its author declined to write more from the perspective of Screwtape less the titular characters' outlook poison his own view of humans. Conservative in a very old school way and so it is interesting that the book still appeals to people today.

God: A Human History of Religion by Reza Alsan

Pantheist is the wrong term, Aslan likes to think of all religion as the narration of a couple of key human themes. The book starts with an incredibly interesting look at paleolithic religion and moves forward from there exploring the way God/s became God, mimicking the transition from tribes towards kingdoms via the principle of politicomorphism, to ideas of a personal God, God in the Flesh and then to  God as Unity. The book has a number of unexpected detours but all of them entertain and inform in a way that leads us back to the central story richer for the experience. Utilising examinations of Neanderthal cave art, to debates over whether Judaism actually started as a monotheistic religion, or whether that was a later affection, this is a fantastic introduction to religious history.

Free to Learn by Peter Gray

Possibly the most interesting and impactful read this year. Peter Gray is an advocate for the importance of free unsupervised play in the development of the emotional and intellectual lives of children. Balancing on a log over a stream is an exercise in assessing risks and managing fear; playing softball with children of different ages is a natural lesson in kindness and, as Gray argues, children pursuing products and endeavours of their own choosing learn far more about self determination and problem solving than they ever could in a classroom.

Peter Gray draws attention to independent schools where compulsory teacher directed classes are non-existent and continue to have, anecdotal, success in producing well adjusted and intelligent young people. He puts his offspring where his mouth is too - his own son is enrolled in such a school, Gray successfully calls into question the legitimacy of state-mandated compulsory schooling and elevates free play above all. An incredibly philosophically challenging read but one that I really welcome.  

Ramblings: Philosophy, Methodology and Certainty.

It was the promise of accuracy that drew me to philosophy. The promise of being able to look into something as messy as an argument and identify clear winners and losers. Ironically it was a scientist, not a philosopher, who got me hooked.  I remember reading the God Delusion as a teen and being floored by Richard Dawkins as he reasoned his way to concrete conclusions on abstract topics like God and morality. For a long time this was what I thought philosophy actually delivered: a systematic grilling of suppositions that removed fuzziness from elusive subjects via cold logical necessity.

 

Of course neither philosophy nor logic operate in the way my young self envisioned them. Noting that the premises "A" and "A therefore B" provide you with the conclusion "B" is all very well, but working in real time to demonstrate the soundness of even a simple modus ponens can be difficult. The problem stems from different people's propensity to entertain selected premises with varying levels of enthusiasm. Not only that but people, philosophers especially, often end up arguing about the appropriateness of various linguistic conventions within which a premise might be expressed.  

This observation is mildly troubling to anyone of a similar disposition to my younger quasi-neo-positivist self. If arguments are to be disputed effectively in a dialogue of pure logic then the participants need to share the appropriate premises. The sheer extent to which philosophers fail to share premises, including fundamental ones like those governing concept identity, somewhat undercuts the idea that philosophy is an activity of just applying logic and coming to a conclusion.

It is important to note however that this isn't a problem for the broader application of logic within philosophy. Instead it is a problem for notions of philosophical truth attempting to approximate "certain truth". Cartesian demons aside, there is a distinction between scientific truth and philosophical truth. While the outer rims of scientific inquiry are uncertain places science does provide us with facts like "water at sea level boils when it hits 100 degrees Celsius"; these are things that philosophy doesn't provide. Even the most instrumental of fields, applied ethics, rarely confronts us with anything like a philosophical consensus out of which could emerge a "fact".

This wide zone of disagreement is a product of philosophical arguments being dependent on premises which are themselves nestled into wider networks of related philosophical arguments which in turn are nestled in even wider networks... ad infinitum... Or maybe not quite ad infinitum, but these chains are long enough and often so complex that tracing them may as well be an infinite endeavour. So, where does this leave philosophers?

Well, assuming that we don't have time to sit debating the truthfulness of every connected premise in a given argument then we will just have to assume certain premises. Of course which premises we question and which we accept are determined by our aforementioned predilections. Furthermore while the arena of debate often acts as an aid forcing us to defend premises that we would otherwise assume to be true, it's efficacy is limited: opponents in a debate only point us towards premises that they would question, not necessarily the premises we should question. 

In light of this I don't think we can position philosophy as the provider of linearly accrued capital K "Knowledge". Philosophers cannot snatch certainty from the jaws of the abstract. Yet maybe they can offer something that is more contingent and perhaps just as illuminating. Philosophical debates rarely end, but they are often developed and deepened. A more realistic goal for philosophy may just be to properly delineate the gaps in our knowledge and provide a selection of placeholders in lieu of definite answers.