Hi Riaz,
Thanks for your posting, I found it very thought provoking. There are a couple of issues in your reading of MacIntyre that I would like to respond to, or ask you to tease apart. The first of these is your discussion of practices. You say:
‘Can I take it that certain activities in the field of Economics could be defined as having the potential for being a practice, and can some of these activities be extended to the City of London?  If so, is it possible that the goods of excellence and goods of effectiveness can become one and the same thing?’
Whilst I am not sure if goods of effectiveness and excellence can become one and the same thing (my gut instinct says not), I am pretty certain that city trading is not a practice: that is, if we are to understand a practice following MacIntyre. In order to determine what is, and what is not, a practice we must firstly determine if the activity in question has goods that are internal (goods of excellence) to that activity. Secondly, we must understand what it is we mean by goods of excellence.
Goods of excellence are, by their nature, inexhaustible. Take MacIntyre’s famous example of chess. In chess, the goods of excellence (those goods internal to the practice) are the development of strategic nous: knowing when to attack; when to defend; when to pursue territorial position and when to concede it; when to sacrifice; and, perhaps, when to concede the game. Now, if I develop those goods in my chess practice – if I become a better strategist – there is not an equal but opposite diminishment of strategic nous in the other participants in the practice of chess. If I become a better player, it doesn’t mean that some poor guy in France, for example, becomes a worse player!
Let’s transfer this to your example of city trading. What is it to be a ‘good’ city trader? I think it is fair to say that a good city trader, as the concept of ‘good’ is understood by the people involved in the activity, is the trader who makes the most money. So money is the ‘good’ of city trading. However, in order for city trader #1 to earn money, city trader #2 must lose money. There is not an inexhaustible supply of money: city trading is a zero-sum activity where the goods involved are limited and the acquisition of goods by one participant results in a diminishment in the goods of another. Therefore, city trading cannot be a practice.
***
Another thing you discuss is the concept of tradition and how you see MacIntyre as advocating relativism. You also suggest that MacIntyre does not allow the possibility for traditions to fuse and synthesize into a new tradition. I think you are right, in a way, on both accounts – though I think MacIntyre would not be overly worried by the accusations you make.
Why do I say this?
Because I think you and MacIntyre have different understandings of what traditions are. When he uses the word tradition in the context of the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, MacIntyre is not talking about the traditions of ‘we go to mass and you guys go to service’ or ‘we support Glasgow Celtic and you guys support Glasgow Rangers’. Rather, he is taking about ‘rational’ traditions – the way in which reasoning takes place. In order for a tradition to be a tradition, it must have a clearly defined way of reasoning out its conceptualizations of the ultimate good – what is the ideal state of being for a human to become. Now, different traditions only become interesting for MacIntyre when they develop epistemological crises – issues that cannot be satisfactorily reasoned out whilst adhering to the rules of rationality as defined by that tradition – or when two traditions that have different conceptualizations of the ultimate good, come into conflict.
In the case of epistemological problems, there is no opportunity for traditions to fuse and synthesize, because the tradition with the ability to overcome the epistemological crises is the winner and it supplants the former tradition. The best example MacIntyre gives for this is the collision of the geocentric tradition in physics with the heliocentric tradition. There could only be one winner. Why? Because the heliocentric tradition was able to reason out all the epistemological crises that had arisen in the studies of physics that utilized the geocentric model. In fact, so rationally superior was the heliocentric model that it was able to explain to the adherents of geocentrism WHY their crises had arisen and WHY they had been unable to resolve these crises. In other words, in a conflict of reason, the heliocentric tradition totally obliterated the geocentric.
Finally (phew!!!), what about relativism? If we have two traditions, one of which contains no rational epistemological crises and the other which does contain some crises, then it is rationally wrong to value equally those two traditions: one is clearly better at reasoning than the other. However, if we have two traditions, neither of which contain rational epistemological crises, then it is not rational to try to supplant one with the other: they are both equally able to rationalize – they just do it following different traditions of rationality. The best course of action in such a situation is to try to understand the opposing tradition. This is what MacIntyre advocates.
As for your final point, that it should be possible to step outside of traditions, this would not register on MacIntyre’s radar as he would likely see it as an irrational (outside reason) statement – because, in stepping outside, what would you be stepping into, if not another tradition? You see, skepticism is a tradition too, with its own system of rationality and reason. Being a skeptic does not mean you abandon reason. Such a step would be like trying to step outside of language in order to discuss language from an objective standpoint: what could we use to discuss language, if not language?

I would be very interested in your thoughts on the above,
Regards,
Damien

This Thursday’s (21 May) discussion promises to be lively. the short papers are directly available from the links below.

All discussions take place in the ground floor (cafe area this week) of the library (LRC) at EHU Ormskirk, 12.30-1.30pm, normally alternating Thursday lunchtimes. Lunch provided, all welcome.

1. Thursday 21 May, 12.30-1.30pm - please note change of date

Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller, Richard E. Clark: ‘Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching’

http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf

… offers a critique of social constructivism, especially as applied in university settings.  It is discussed in the wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory)#

… and in the same page the article is critiqued and that critique rebutted (with references – (nice touch!)).

I found Kirschner et al a very informative article, “Lighting my fire” in the desire to understand my reluctance to buy into the “social constructive” bandwagon at EH and giving me evidence to rebutt the social constructivist onslaught – it caused some interesting discussions in the office and beyond. I currently buy into the notion that behaviourist and instructivist approaches (pedagogies?)  should not be discounted, especially for novice learners, whilst at the same time I’m looking for more empowering learning scenarios underpinned by a social constructivist pedagogy for ‘expert’ learners.  Thus the article “Informed” me, moving me from unconscious competent (I hope) to a conscious competent state – explaining why things which worked in teaching career (my unconscious state) were successful.

Proposer: David Callaghan

Here are Riaz Meer’s thoughts on Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of a Practice, and the Origin of Virtues.

MacIntyre comes up with the notion of Practices.  Although he gives a concise definition of what practice is (After Virtue, p.187), it is not clear which human activities are to be classed as practices and which are not.  Also some activities that have the potential to be practices are currently not practices.  One can conclude therefore that it is not only what you do, but the way that you do it.

Any particular practice has goods attached to it, and they are of two distinct kinds.  There are external goods, now called goods of effectiveness, and internal goods, now called goods of excellence.  Goods of effectiveness are the “accidents of social circumstance, and in the modern world are typically money, power and fame.” (After Virtue p. 188).

Goods of excellence can only be achieved by participating in a particular practice, and have the characteristic of benefiting the entire community of people who engage in said practice.

By coming up with this notion of the goods of practices, MacIntyre is able to give a definition of virtue.  This is an important and central motivation for his philosophy, and stems from a desire to counter Nietzsche’s attack on morality.  Whereas the goods of effectiveness can be achieved in ways both good and bad, the goods of effectiveness can only be gained by the presence of virtues.  Virtues therefore are defined as those characteristics necessary in achieving the goods of excellence in a particular practice.

MacIntyre makes great play of historical tradition.  My understanding of this is that because any given practice comes out of a tradition, the rational superiority of a new theory can only be judged as such in relation to all the theories that have preceded it within that tradition.  It follows therefore for MacIntyre that there can be no conception of rationality over and above any particular tradition.  There is no possibility of an objective reality outside traditions.

The notion of distinct goods of practice is a very powerful one and seems to go along way in defining for us what we can accept to be virtuous in the modern world.  However I have some difficulties with what is and is not to be defined a practice, and also with the special status he affords tradition, and specifically religious tradition.

Taking firstly the question of what is and is not a practice?  For example can I take it that certain activities in the field of Economics could be defined as having the potential for being a practice, and can some of these activities be extended to the City of London?  If so, is it possible that the goods of excellence and goods of effectiveness can become one and the same thing?

Politics is defined as a meta-practice, because if successful, it brings about the engagement of many practices into individual human lives.  However teaching is not a practice;

“The teacher should think of her or himself as a mathematician, a reader of poetry, an historian or whatever, engaged in communicating craft and knowledge to apprentices.  It follows that you cannot train teachers well, until they have been educated into whatever discipline it is they are to transmit.” (Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 36, No. 1 2002, p. 5).

“It is part of my claim that teaching is never more than a means, that it has no point and purpose except for the point and purpose of the activities to which it introduces the students.  All teaching is for the sake of something else and so teaching does not have its own goods…This is one reason why any conception of the philosophy of education as a distinct area of philosophical enquiry is a mistake.” (ibid, p. 9).

But does this not mean that teaching is really, like politics, a meta-practice?  MacIntyre is certainly a huge morale booster for teachers, inasmuch as he identifies the good reasons for being a teacher, and justifies our acceptance of (relative) financial pain.  However more generally there is a paradox in his place of education in society:

 “It is only insofar as there is already an educated public in existence that issues concerning education will be adequately debated in the political arena…What we confront is very great difficulty, not impossibility.” (ibid, p.17).

MacIntyre is hopeful that this vicious circle can be overcome, but he is not particularly convincing in saying how.

Looking at the conception of tradition.  MacIntyre offers us this:

“What students need to understand is that all answers to the question ‘What is the ultimate human good?’ are grounded in the thought and practice of some particular tradition.  They do so not only by learning what their own tradition has to teach, but also by learning at some early stage that there are other and rival traditions and what some of them teach, so that they understand how fundamental disagreements about the human good arise.  The aim should not be for the students to view each tradition, including their own, from some neutral, objective standpoint, for there is no such standpoint, but rather to learn how each tradition is understood both by those who inhabit it and by those who view it from an external and perhaps hostile standpoint.” (ibid, p.12).

This, I believe, is a clear unabashed advocating of relativism.  There can be no objective truth.  MacIntyre is not even allowing for different viewpoints to fuse or synthesise into a new tradition, and why should it not be possible to devise a skeptical education system that views all traditions from an “external and perhaps hostile standpoint”?

MacIntyre takes from this that education should be carried out from within the traditions of separate religious worldviews.  He also has his own (Catholic?) conception of human nature that, in this reading at any rate, comes out of nowhere;

“All children have within them a vein of nastiness (one aspect of original sin) and this may always and too often does issue in contempt for the weak, the disabled, and the foreign, so that these can be turned into victims.” (ibid, pg.18).

So MacIntyre believes us all to have the potential to be contemptuous to others, and indeed states that “prejudice is an enemy of education”, but rather than suggesting that different groups be educated together, he comes up with the following;

“where there are schools informed by the values of some distinctive tradition, Catholic or Protestant or Orthodox, Jewish or Islamic or Hindu, it is of crucial importance that their students participate in activities shared with all those with whom they are least likely to be in sympathy.” (ibid, p.19).

But this, in my view, is a sticking plaster ad hoc solution to an unnecessary apartheid education system.

Riaz Meer

2. Thursday 14 May, 12.30-1.30pm, Library, Ormskirk, lunch provided, all welcome

This week’s reading is ‘Alasdair MacIntyre on Education: in dialogue with Joseph Dunne’, and appears in the Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2002,  Vol. 36, No.1.

            It is an interview with Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the most prominent living philosophers. Edge Hill has a subscription to this journal, so it is freely available to all – Also, here are a couple of links to some introductory pages on MacIntyre’s work, particularly ‘practices’ and ‘goods’ which are mentioned several times in the article: http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/phil_oct2002.htm

this is a very brief summary of MacIntyre’s two core concepts: ‘practices’ and ‘goods’.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/p-macint.htm

section 6 of this long essay is a more in-depth discussion of ‘practices’ and ‘goods’. Proposer Damien Shortt

This is a fascinating chapter and one that I will return to again – in addition to reading the other chapters on the Marxists.org website. What struck me was the way in which Freire explicitly places himself in the ‘humanist’ tradition of historical materialism and critical theory. This dates back far into history, but I would imagine that The German Ideology by Marx and Engels plus Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts – which refer repeatedly to humans’ sensuous nature and the centrality of human action to how the world evolves – rather than more ‘scientific’ writings such as Preface to a Critique of Political Economy, were instructive for Freire. This then feeds into the rise of phenomenology in the 20th century – hence Freire’s citing of Sartre and Husserl – and its emphasis on the importance of our subjective experience of the world as it appears to us.

Therefore, if we want to achieve a greater sense of social justice and emancipation, it is up to us in order to make it so. Hence Freire’s striking comment on the need to have consciousness about having consciousness, which perfectly encapsulates his beliefs about education and knowledge, and the need for teachers and students to be co-investigators through dialogue with each other. Thus knowledge is transformed from being a commodity which can be deposited, fully formed, into the laps of students who absorb by rote, to an ongoing, creative process which leads to personal growth of both teacher and student as they approach different questions in different ways.

Hence Freire offers a clear basis for a critique of the test-driven mania which pervades education in the UK, for these forms of assessment are rooted in the assumption that students can simply place onto their exam paper the required knowledge. Education is utilitarian, knowledge is fixed, students are passive recipients of ‘truths’, and hierarchy in the classroom is maintained. This is all good. However, the problem I have always had with this kind of approach is the contradiction between the teacher’s role in this process with the emphasis on co-investigation. In theory, Freire argues that we need to be more open to both how knowledge about the world is created and to the basis upon which we judge the claims made about the world by such knowledge. In other words, a student’s comment is as valid as their teacher’s.

But in practice, there must be a residual hierarchy in order for this process to actually take place. As Freire says, ‘The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos.’ This seems to me to imply a different kind of relationship than what Freire argues for – not least because he seems to ‘know’ what true knowledge is. As such – and as with so many pedagogical theories which emphasise dialogue, the absence of hierarchy and the ongoing co-production of knowledge – epistemology (openness to various knowledge claims) conflicts with methodology (it is the teacher’s role, not the students’, to ensure that we achieve such epistemological openness).

I don’t have a problem with this – not at all. But it does beg the question: who teaches the teachers to be epistemologically open? For this reason – and this is where people who know me will think ‘yet again he’s talking about Gramsci’ – I prefer how Antonio Gramsci is explicit when discussing his conceptualisation of intellectuals. He states that all humans are intellectuals because everybody thinks, and so has the capacity to make judgements about the world, judge what causes and effects are, and so on. Nevertheless, not all humans have the function of intellectuals, who he sees as possessing a directive role in the process of knowledge creation. Hence his notes on education, where he affirms his belief in Socratic teaching while also retaining an emphasis on the need for certain subjects to be taught more didactically. This is because certain things need to be absorbed by rote (such as language) in order for the process of becoming an intellectual – that is, to have consciousness about consciousness – to begin.

Clearly, Gramsci takes us into murkier waters through his attempt to prevent his epistemological and methodological positions on education and knowledge production from contradicting each other. And of course, it can be seen how his reintroduction of some level of didactic teaching methods could easily be the thin end of the wedge (hence why some argue that although Gramsci was a more sophisticated Marxist than most, he still believed in certain ‘truths’ that undermined his more open-minded philosophy). For this reason, I feel a combination of Gramsci and Freire would take us further along the path towards a truly convincing critical pedagogy than either of them alone.

Here are my thoughts on Paulo Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ Chapter 2.

As someone trying to understand a ‘humanist’ approach to education (I’m currently reading, and thoroughly enjoying, Louise Porter) there is a lot to take from the description of the ‘Banking mode’ and it’s comparison with ‘problem-posing’ education, however I have a number of questions.

1. Freire’s philosophy appears to draw on existentialism (hence the references to de Beauvoir & Sartre). Sartre himself draws on the German philosophers Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. Is this then the influence for his assertion that the Banking model assumes a dichotomy between human beings and the world (and that this dichotomy is false!). After he states this he describes a distinction between consciousness and objects that frankly eluded me. Can you help me here? Also as a science teacher in what sense do gravity, atomic structure or even abstract concepts like numbers, fall within this (phenomenologist?) outlook?

2. Although based on existentialism, Freire’s own motivation and prescription seem to be based on Marx’s notion of history. This as I understand it supposes that human history is predictable, and the specific prediction is that man (specifically the proletariat) will overcome the current capitalist system and create a communist society which will ultimately lead to the withering away of the state, and the beginning of a true realm of freedom.

Freire is often alluding to this both in his criticism of the banking model and his affirmation of the problem-posing model, for e.g:

“Problem-posing education is revolutionary futurity. Hence it is prophetic. Hence it corresponds to the historical nature of humankind”.

“Men(’s) …ontological vocation is humanization”

“humanization – the people’s historical vocation”.

etc..

However if, like me, one cannot believe in Marx’s utopian idea of the inevitability of historical progress, is there much left for Freire to say?

3. Freire quotes Fromm. I do not know him. Is he worth reading and if so any suggestions?

4. Freire (or the translator?) is constantly referring to ‘praxis’. What does this mean? Is their a better word? Is it, as I believe, like Weber’s notion of charisma – an empty phrase?

Many thanks

Riaz