Dear Sam & Lawrence,
Lawrence wrote 17/11 19:17 -0500:
'How do we determine whether a teacher has indoctrinated him/herself past
the point of usefulness, and to a point where they have indeed become
disempowering?'
Sam wrote 22/3 10:04 -0000:
'I'm not sure that there is a single infallible means of determining when a
teacher becomes an ideologue ... things like agreement with empirical data,
logical consistency and aesthetic and ethical appeal. So with the Cathars
... there was no agreed means for determining the truth at that time, so it
ended up being a political struggle'.
I wrote 9/2 19:56 +0100:
'An intellectual pattern of values is reproduced by people copying motives
from other people (their reasoning that is supposedly "behind" consciously
motivated actions); its static latch is reproduced motives or "ideology" (in
a non-derogatory sense), "accumulated ways to justify actions". In a stable
social pattern of values without serious competitors nearly all behavior is
"normal" and needs no conscious justification. Motivation and copying
motives from others is unnecessary.
An intellectual pattern of values which is not just an appendage of the
social level needs competing social patterns of values to be
preserved/reproduced. It not only contains ways to expand "knowledge", a
growing set of stories about the intellectual value of those lower level
patterns of values, but also ways to justify those stories via--vis
alternative stories. ...
Consciously justified/motivated behavior ... implies (relatively free)
choice and the possibility to break, change or at least make exceptions to
social patterns of values.'
So any intellectual pattern of values (even while latched in 'ideology',
'accumulated justification') empowers people to break/change/deviate from
social patterns of values (habitual behavior).
'Being an ideologue' or 'disempowering rather empowering' is a matter of
degree, of passing on a lower or higher quality intellectual pattern of
values.
I continued 9/2 19:56 +0100:
'An intellectual pattern of values preserves/reproduces a particular set of
ideas' by disputing alternative sets of ideas. 'Disputing the truth of
alternative sets of ideas presupposes a common denominator. E.g. disputing
whether decentralized distributed control or central control of the economy
produces most wealth presupposes that producing wealth is an important goal
of any society. And disputing whether electrons are waves or particles
presupposes the existence of electrons. The set of ideas that is the common
denominator for dispute of an intellectual pattern of values is ...
preserved/ reproduced/ reinforced by the dispute even if no-one ever puts it
into words.
Disputing such "common denominator" ideas can easily be criticized as
"attacking a straw man", as criticizing ideas that nobody holds. The fact
that they are the "common denominator" for all the disputes that are part of
a particular intellectual pattern of values, implies that most people (who
have never consciously experienced alternative intellectual patterns of
values) are not aware of them and will never put them into words.
Alternative intellectual patterns of values have different "common
denominators" for disputes and therefore can't be
reconciled by appealing to "truth".'
So the set of ideas that is preserved/reproduced by an intellectual pattern
of values is the common denominator of a broader set of alternative sets of
ideas. Disputing the truth of these is the very 'mechanism' that
preserves/reproduces that common denominator.
Empowerment is proportional to the room for dispute an intellectual pattern
of values leaves (and its versatility) and inversely proportional to the
size and strength of its common denominator (and its stability). The most
empowering and least 'ideological' (in the derogatory sense) intellectual
patterns of values are the least stable ones!
Teachers need to be 'ideological' (even in the derogatory sense) to some
extent, or their intellectual pattern of values (and its core ideas) won't
last (neither will the social pattern of values on which it is founded if
all its pupils are empowered to break it).
So once again we need both static and Dynamic, we need balance between
indoctrination and empowerment. And we need wisdom, the goal of
'philosophy', to determine what constitutes balance...
Maybe the Cathars unbalanced their society and that which passed for
knowledge then too much? Maybe the time was not ripe yet for that much
empowerment?
Doesn't any intellectual pattern of values also imply political struggle
between those it empowers to change society and those with a vested interest
(status) in it (utilizing the same intellectual pattern of values to dispute
the 'truth' of the heresy of those empowered people)?
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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