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Know Your Enemy
Conservatives of America! Meet your enemy, John Dewey, and find out what he’s all about.
That’s just a short video from the Great Texts in Philosophy playlist on my YouTube channel, and the first of a series now airing on the The Philosophers in Their Own Words playlist.
Truth be told, I don’t actually think Dewey is the enemy. I think he’s an interesting philosopher who’s not always right. But I enjoy reading him when I can, and I agree with him on some things. You can keep an eye out in this series for reasons why your so-called enemy is not exactly a caricature of an arch-leftist–maybe even an ally from time to time. Here are some pointers on what he says:
- Education is how a society renews its life from one generation to the next. Education involves initiating the young’uns in the life of their society. In a democratic society, that means (among other things) equal participation in education.
- Education should involve a good bit of scientific training. But it should also involve some old ideas and old books as introductions to and training in the moral and intellectual life of the society’s past.
- Education should be active–not one where students passively absorb information, but one where young humans learn to use and channel their energy into creative and useful action. A good education doesn’t need Ritalin. (I think the failure of schools in the USA these days to harness the interests and energies of students would leave Dewey appalled and deeply upset.)
Here’s the first video from the Own Words playlist:
And here’s the second one: The video isn’t loading properly, but here’s the URL.
Expect one more each Monday for the next four weeks.
Published in Education
Oh, maybe it’s this: When I said “red” the first time, you thought I was thinking of qualia–of perception purely in the mind. So when I said you could switch it out it seemed like I was saying mental qualia could be switched out.
Well, you should probably know that I was not thinking of qualia when I said “red.” I was thinking of the mind-independent property in the red pen and the red book.
I have no idea where you are going with this, but I’ll play. Yes. I have a number of left shoes, and I think that all of them weigh more than an ounce (assuming that we are measuring that on the surface of the Earth). So?
Oh, believe me there is little risk of that since I have no idea what you mean by the term “qualia.” The SEP defines qualia as follows:
I don’t see how that definition has anything whatsoever to do with whatever you are talking about. It is just one of those concepts that wanders off beyond the metaphysical event horizon and, as you know, I have no interest at all in discussing metaphysics. I will note, though, that the SEP definition is clearly not mind-independent.
Correct. That’s why it’s a different topic.
And that’s why it’s best avoided if the topic is universals.
So two different left shoes have the same property of weighing more than an ounce?
But they aren’t all “red”
Well, if you want to be precise about it, the “property” is mass rather than weight, and it is not the “same” mass but they both mass more than an ounce. As do 18-wheelers and tablet computers, among many other things. And I ask again, what is your point?
You’re not answering the question. I’m not asking about mass or weight. I’m asking about a property. I’m asking about the property of weighing more than an ounce, or the property of having a mass greater than an ounce.
If you don’t understand the question, it’s better for everyone if you just stop now.
If you want me to jump ahead, the point would be that universals exist, of course.
But if you don’t understand the question, it really is better if you just stop here.
Larry, he really does think it’s a distinct thing, and he even thinks he has a precise definition for it. It’s the philosophy trap. They have to make the imaginary real, else they’re just playing with imagination.
Well, that’s as good a description of metaphysics as any I have encountered.
I am answering the question. I’m just answering it more precisely than you want when you are trying to put words in my mouth. Mass is a property. It is a property of all matter. “More than an ounce” might be a property, depending on what you mean by a “property.” It is not something that is intrinsic to left shoes. More along the lines of “it jes’ so happens.” By the way, I’m not sure whether it is a left or right shoe, but my Monopoly game has a boot token than masses less than an ounce.
That’s jumping ahead a bit too far. I don’t follow how you get from here to there, or even how you are defining a universal. As best I can tell, your original claim was that any property or quality of anything is a “universal.” But I don’t know what is supposed to be universal about it. Are you saying that left shoes are the same as 18-wheelers and computer tablets because they all mass/weigh more than an ounce? I hope not, because that would be a pretty silly observation, don’t you think?
“Shut up!” he explained.
Larry, nothing is “universal,” in that sense, about universals. “Univerals” is a technical term, like I said, for shared properties. Not just any property, but shared ones. If just two objects have the same property, that property is a universal.
(Doesn’t really matter what the property is, but the property I was asking about was not mass; it was the property of weighing more than an ounce.)
Augie, I’m trying to figure out what you are driving at here. I can’t be sure, but I think it’s this: Suppose I have a shoe that weighs more than an ounce. To me, that’s the end of the story. The only thing that “exists” in my story is the shoe. But you are suggesting that there are two separate and distinct things that “exist” in my story. First, the shoe. Second, the “property” of weighing more than an ounce. And you are claiming that the “property” has its own distinct “existence,” apart from the shoe. Furthermore, you seem to be claiming that the “property” has an “existence” that is mind-independent.
I’m afraid I can’t agree with any of that. The weight of the shoe is simply a descriptive fact about the shoe. As is its color, its shape, and its material composition. If I examine many shoes, and observe that they all weigh more than an ounce, then I might very well reach the conclusion (by a process of inductive reasoning) that shoes in general weigh more than an ounce. For the sake of convenience, we might use the phrasing that the shoes share the “property” of weighing more than an ounce. And that’s fine, so long as we don’t convince ourselves that by saying that we have said anything more than that each shoe weighs more than an ounce. But if you think that by sneaking the word “property” into the account you have somehow added a new and independent thing to the story, then I think you are simply engaged in self-deception. Saying that the shoes “share the property” of weighing more than an ounce is absolutely no different than saying that each shoe weighs more than an ounce. They are semantically identical statements. They mean exactly the same thing – no more and no less.
Now, if you take the common characteristic that applies to each shoe – the characteristic that forms the basis for our inductive reasoning – and choose to call that a “universal” as a term of art, that’s fine with me. I’m not sure why you want to do that, and I think the term “universal” is misleading because there is nothing about it that is “universal” as that word is used in common English. But if that’s what you want to do, it’s fine with me.
Now one more thing about this – it involves, as I said, a process of inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning (or any reasoning) cannot be mind-independent. It requires a mind to identify the similarity between the items and conclude that they all belong is a particular category based on one or more common characteristics. But the category that you have created based on a similarity of its constituent members does not have a mind-independent “existence.” It is something that exists only in your mind.
Yes, I think properties exist. (I’m not saying they’re separate.)
Plato says (more or less) that it exists apart from the shoe. Aristotle says it does not exist apart from the shoe, although it does exist. I don’t care very much about that debate.
But of course.
I’m not using that sort of reasoning. It may be decent inductive reasoning, but it is entirely off-topic.
Of course they mean the same thing. That’s why I think universals exist.
Fine and dandy. It’s just a technical term in metaphysics. (I know no alternative English term, and I’ve never known philosophy nerds to use any other term.)
Well, Augie, I’ve always said that metaphysics is nothing more than tail-chasing, and I hope you have fun trying to catch yours. Before I leave the subject, I think I will do what you refuse to do, and explain how I would support the proposition that a thing has a mind-independent existence. I would look at whether I can see it, feel it, smell it, hear it, and/or taste it. I would look at whether it can be observed to interact with other things that have a mind-independent existence. (E.g., if you throw it at a window, does the window break?) I would consider whether other observers confirm my perceptions. If a thing meets most or all of those criteria, I would be confident in concluding that it has a mind-independent existence.
Of course, your “properties” meet none of those criteria, and you refuse to say what criteria you are using to determine that “properties” have mind-independent existence. Well, that’s fine I suppose. You’re a philosopher, so its not surprising that you think you need nothing more than your own unsupported assertion to prove a proposition. I, on the other hand, am a lawyer. When I say something, I am expected to back it up with facts and reasoning. So, there we have the difference between us.
One more thing: I asked you what you meant by the word “exist.” You refused to say, but you referred me to the dictionary definition. There are a lot of dictionary definitions of that word, and I have looked at at least a dozen of them. Not one of them would support your conclusion that your “properties” exist, much less that they have a mind-independent existence. So, in short, you got nothing. Nothing at all.
So here I am chasing facts, and Larry shows up to chase his strange misperceptions of me. Same old, same old. But the metaphor of chasing one’s own tail would seem to fit you a bit better.
What you want from me, and what you imagine you clearly asked me which I failed clearly to answer, I honestly can’t even guess.
“Universals” is a technical term in philosophy for a thing some philosophers think exist: shared properties. If any two or more things have the same property, that property is called a “universal.” I think universals exist independently of the mind for the simple reason that I observe that two or more things often do have the same property quite independently of minds. For example, the property of weighing more than an ounce.
That’s it. (What else you may want from me I, once again and quite honestly, cannot guess.)