SHOULD PHILOSOPHY BE TAUGHT TO SCHOOLCHILDREN ?
15th November 2004
If we define philosophy as the 'love of wisdom' then we might claim reasonably that its study is the very essence of education. My answer is therefore YES - subject to some rather strict conditions.
"The unexamined life is not worth living". According to Plato, this was said after the guilty verdict had been brought at the trial of Socrates. (This information comes from Nigel Rees - a well known broadcaster on BBC Radio - ES).
The essential features of good philosophy are :
1) respect for fact or, more usually, intelligently assessed probability as to fact :
2) distinction between fact (of whatever degree of probability) and belief (held with whatever degree of sincerity) :
3) adherence to common logic :
4) effort to uncover hidden assumptions with a view to evaluating them :
5) 'do philosophy' with a view to seeking truth NOT merely endorsing bias or wishful thinking :
6) accept that asking the right questions is hard enough but getting the right answers is much harder and so living with honest doubt is a required discipline - which, however, should not inhibit action when inaction is not a tenable option.
Let us consider briefly these criteria of good philosophy in turn particularly in relation to teaching young or inexperienced pupils.
Re 1) how do we know that xyz is, in fact, the case? Pupils will give examples of propositions (statements that are factual in nature be they true or false, probable or improbable) with only a little prompting. Their reasons for claiming to know that particular instances of xyz are truly the case will be various indeed - ranging from "I feel it in my bones" to"'everybody knows that ....." to "here are good solid reasons for affirming (or denying, as the case may be) the proposition that 'xyz is the case". (Good sound reasons include internal consistency and consistency with truths already known). Unsound claims as to factual knowledge are a principle feature of phobosophy - the aversion to wisdom.
Re 2) religion is the prime arena in which belief is presented as fact. 'God exists' is belief as to fact quite different in kind from 'Apple pie exists'. People may feel that God exists and, in at least some cases, the feeling is genuine and valuable to those who experience it. We know that apple pie exists simply from experience (of cooking one or eating one). This distinction is important, NOT because God, if any, would be more important than apple pie but because the existence of the one is not directly experienced by touch, taste sight and smell while the other is experienced by means of all of those senses. 'Apple pie' is not subject to an 'if any' reservation. 'God' is a perception; 'apple pie' is, directly, a fact of experience - an empirical fact. It may be, for bats, an audio experience?
Re 3) even at a very early stage it is possible, indeed required, to to teach children about fallacies. Lists of these appear in any primer of philosophy and examples, at any level from great simplicity to great subtlety, can be constructed in class discussion.
Some common fallacies are as follows
Do not be shy of common Latin phrases (or abbreviations thereof) such as i.e. meaning 'that is' or nem con (used at business meetings) meaning 'unopposed'. These have usefully precise meanings uncorrupted simply because they are in a 'dead' language that still 'lives' in our brains..
A non sequitur is committed when you say that something follows logically when it does not. Thus it is a non sequitur to say that Fido is a dog so therefore he will bite your leg.
Two recognised logical procedures are deduction and induction. Both can be used fallaciously.
'Deduction' means to start from a general statement and decide on particular cases that follow from it without non sequitur. The statement that "The ten commandments are an infallibly true guide to human conduct" is a general statement from which it follows, deductively, for example, that telling a lie ("bearing false witness") is always wrong. So it would be wrong, by deduction, to tell a known thief false information about something that he needs to know if his intended next robbery is to succeed. Most people would regard such false information as 'a white lie'. The trouble with deduction is that the general principle may not be absolutely dependable even if it is sound enough in most cases.
'Induction' means the reverse process - constructing a supposedly true general statement from many specific instances. My parents, my brother, my sister were all right-handed - as I am. My son's mother and her parents were all right-handed. By induction we might suppose that all of both families are (or were) right handed. In fact, my daughter is right-handed but my son is not.
Induction is only dependable if we assume that there are no exceptions and, in fact. there is at least one exception to the general statement "our relatives are right handed". My son's son (b 2003) has yet to show his handedness. There is an old saying that 'experience is the best teacher' but note that there is no old saying that experience is an infallible teacher
Note that absence of evidence is not conclusive evidence of absence. I have no evidence that murder has ever been committed in the house in which my wife and have lived for twenty-one years. (This house is well over one hundred years old). This absence of evidence does not prove that no murder has ever happened in this house; perhaps it has happened but no evidence has reached us.
Circular argument is fallacious. It is a non sequitur to say that the human being is the only species of animal with a soul because having a soul is the thing that makes us different from other animals. Circular argument is easily undetected if it is stated in a long and complicated way.
Argument from authority is not absolutely dependable because the authority might be wrong. It is illogical to say that the universe was created in six days simply because someone has said it was. (This is an example of deductive fallacy).
An opposite fallacy is argumentum ad hominem - which can be exemplified by saying that I disagree with my neighbour about music, books, gardening, politics and so on so therefore he is wrong about cookery too. Equally, disliking someone is no good reason for disagreeing with all his opinions simply because they are his. Nasty people can be right in some ways; nice people can be wrong in some ways. This fallacy is an inductive fallacy.
It is most important to see the distinction between valid argument and sound argument. A valid argument is one that is logically acceptable. For example it is valid to argue that my wife has six-digit hands so therefore, when she needs gloves, they need to be made especially for her. (Shops do not stock six-digit gloves). The argument is, although valid, unsound - being based on factual error. My wife, in fact, has normal five-digit hands and so she can buy suitable gloves from ordinary shops. The distinction between valid and sound, in this connection, can be avoided by using if/then'. If my wife had six-digit hands then she would need specially made gloves (assuming she needs gloves at all).
Re 4) The final parenthesised words in the preceding paragraph illustrate the need to identify hidden assumptions. Consider the hidden assumption behind 'Britain must not convert to the Euro too soon'. This conceals, by omission, assumptions such as - perhaps it is already too late and perhaps the existing members will not let the UK in anyway.
Re 5) We are all tempted to wishful thinking; try to teach people that thoughtful wishing is the ideal.
Re 6) Many windbags are seduced by the wrong questions. Before asking a question consider what might actually count as a productive answer - what would be an answer that can lead to further productive questions? The aim of questioning is increased knowledge - not closure.
Much thought fails lamentably to meet these criteria of wisdom-seeking. Indeed there is a great deal of implied aversion to wisdom in each of these six respects, There is a terrible lot of phobosophy in the world - in preaching, propaganda and profit-driven promotions. It is dangerous.
It has to be said that the basic problems of philosophy were first addressed, within the European tradition anyway, by the Greeks of several hundred years BCE. These questions still await exact answers.
Some writers have even said that subsequent philosophy is little more than a footnote to Plato but we need not be so reticent as that. At least some post-Plato answers have since been shown to be illuminatingly unsatisfactory and this humble achievement should not be underrated. Some new questions have arisen. In any case there is the ever pressing need to expose and combat phobosophy. Philosophy ought to be taught to the young. The question how and this is where rigour comes in.
One way might be to teach The Lives and Works of the Great Philosophers. Their lives have, in many cases, been shambolic as this extract from a recent paragraph, in an admirable UK based magazine called PHILOSOPHY NOW, might suggest:
A better approach (which can be used at any level from the most elementary upwards) is the Socratic method. This consists of making a statement, or asking a question, and taking it apart looking for hidden assumptions, dubious factual claims, fallacious logic ... etc etc. These statements, or questions, can be made up for purposes of Socratic teaching; they do not have to be attributable to anyone so they do not need to be examined as to 'what did the writer really mean?'
You can scarcely be too young, given the powers of speech and hearing, to start examining thoughts in conversation with more experienced persons - parents, friends, teachers and others. IFF these discussions are based upon question and answer then the level can be adjusted to suit the participants (IFF is the standard philosophical way of saying 'if and only if').
Our mothers have asked us as children 'How would it be if we all did what you have just done?' That is a first Socratic lesson in moral philosophy taught very early in life.
Such question-based dialogue works IFF it is understood that final answers are elusive if not downright unattainable. Socrates was the archetypal questioner - he conducted tutorials with almost anybody he met. The authorities couldn't take it and eventually they condemned him to death for it.
This is where an important proviso comes in : do not present oversimplifications as final answers (even supposing that the term 'final answer' has any real weight) : do not teach things that have subsequently to be unlearnt if progress is to be made
I have an example, from my experience as a teacher of chemistry, of the resort to statements that may need to be unlearnt. I was running a course for chemistry laboratory technicians in co-operation with another teacher and we were teaching the technique of the 'flame test' for the presence of particular metals in substances of various sorts. A small amount of the substance is heated on a platinum wire held in a gas flame. Different metals cause the flame to be coloured differently; sodium, for example, gives the flame a distinctive yellow colour. My colleague, to his shame, said that when sodium compounds are burnt they emit this yellow light. One of the smarter students asked "Is this the same yellow as seen in the sodium street light?" Answer - correct indeed - YES. But had the student been even smarter he might have asked "Sodium is being burnt in the street lamp but I see no pipes whereby sodium fuel enters the lamp and no chimney whereby the combustion products are removed. Is there not something wrong here?" Answer "YES there is something wrong here; you will have to unlearn the idea of burning sodium compounds to generate yellow light. In the case of the flame test, and of the sodium street lamp too, the sodium atoms emit yellow light as a result of appropriate energy input - the heat of the flame or the electrical discharge through sodium vapour in the lamp. The sodium is not burnt; it is activated energetically.
This 'avoid the need to unlearn' business is no big deal when teaching people how to do a routine job. (I can have some mistaken ideas about electronics but, nonetheless, I can put up a website) but in philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom is hard enough without putting banana skins in the path of the pupil. Don't say "This is THE answer", say "This is far as we can pursue this particular inquiry at this particular time so treat supposedly final answers with the patient scepticism they deserve".
Teach philosophy as problem setting by the teacher and the attempted, but incomplete, problem-solving by the pupils. The tutorial is more useful than the lecture although lecturing does have some uses too.
For example, let us take the problem of causation. We could quote David Hume by name and proceed from there but we get into the pitfall of side issues if we are not careful. Take his statement
"We may define a cause to be 'An object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are placed in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects that resemble the latter'. If this definition be esteemed defective, because drawn from objects foreign to the cause, we may substitute this other definition in its place, viz. 'A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other. (Treatise on Human Nature 170) " .
To discuss this as a 'Life and Work of Hume' question would make an interesting lecture for mature students but to do so would raise such side issues as 'What did Hume really mean?' : 'Are we taking the statement out of context?' : 'Are we making due allowance for changes in English language usage that have occurred during the two and half centuries since Hume wrote?'
It might be better to say baldly "Discuss the crude statement that when events of type A are generally followed by events of type B then we might say that A's cause B's". In the discussion there may be any number of simple examples of this putative truth.
But counter examples can be cited and so the statement (irrespective of what Hume may have written or meant by what he wrote) is evidently in need of repair. Two obvious counter-examples are to be found in the ordinary thunderstorm and in the practice of praying for peace.
In the thunderstorm we see the flash before we hear the bang. If the crude statement under discussion is true then we must conclude that the flash causes the bang. But, actually it does not; the flash and the bang are jointly effects of the same cause - the relevant electrical discharge in the sky. The time lag and the sequence of events do not come from the flash causing the bang but from the fact that light travels about a million times faster than sound so, naturally, we see the flash before we hear the bang.
Again, it is a generally known fact that just before major wars there are, usually, prayers for peace. If the crude statement under discussion is true then the prayers cause the war! Nobody, but nobody, believes this - atheists don't accept that there is anyone to pray to and believers do not think that their god is perversely doing the exact opposite of what they prefer.
These counter examples show that the crude statement under discussion is not satisfactory. Perhaps the distinction between causation and association should be made very early in the pupil's studies. Flash and bang are not realted causally; they are related by association and the same can be said of prayers for peace and the outbreak of war. If we all understood that such a distinction exists then much tendentious propaganda would be exposed instantly for the worthless 'spin' that it is.
Pursuing the matter further ...... perhaps the converse of the above crude statement is tenable. Perhaps we can say truly that where there is causation then events of type B (effects) will come after events of type A (causes). This is all very well but it does no more than define causation; it does not tell us by what means it happens.
Here is a useful chance to teach people that the truth of a proposition does not entail the truth of its converse. There are many easy instances of this starting with - 'All boys are people' does not entail that 'All people are boys'. Again, there would be a lot less phobosophy around if children were taught plainly that the truth of a proposition does not entail the truth of its converse.
Some final points often best illustrated by somewhat contrived, far-fetched, examples:
1) be sure to draw early a distinction between knowhow and knowthat. We have knowthat about the slow speed of snail mail; we have the knowhow to send e-mails.
2) between necessary and sufficient. For example - given the project "Eric Stockton is to shoot his neighbour, Andrew, and avoid punishment for the deed" - we can see that there are necessary conditions for this to happen but that none of them is, on its own, a sufficient condition. Eric must get a gun, must get some ammunition, must acquire the requisite shooting skills and must have motive, opportunity and alibi. All these add up to a sufficient set of conditions for the killing to occur but failure in any one of them dooms the project (because each is a necessary condition). In fact, Andrew is a good friend of mine so the whole idea collapses for lack of motive on my part; on the contrary I would, if need be, go to some lengths to save his life.
3) I repeat - do not be shy of a Latin phrase or two such as a priori and ipso facto. These have precise meanings uncorrupted simply because they are in a 'dead' language that still 'lives' in scholars' brains.
4) do not multiply entities beyond necessity or (as I taught my science students) a good theory is both as simple as it can be, and as complex as it must be, to account for the data. The ancients thought they needed many gods to run the world but people began to simplify this to one sufficient but supposedly necessary god and, many of us, simplify it to the perception that 'no god' is a perfectly adequate view of things.
The foregoing is perhaps be enough to demonstrate that philosophy is eminently teachable to elementary pupils. Socrates did it and what was good enough for Socrates is surely good enough for us.
E.S..
HOME PAGE