From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Sun Dec 24 2000 - 06:26:00 MST
In a message dated 12/20/00 7:41:46 PM Central Standard Time,
nick@nickbostrom.com writes:
> Learning philosophy is mainly about learning careful, critical thinking,
> and the interactive element is critical for that. Learning art history is
> to a large extent to learn to identify, interpret and put into context
> various art-historical artifacts, and the good way of doing that is by
> walking around in museums etc. in a small group with your teacher and
> discuss what you see. - You need feedback on your performance in order to
> learn well, and it is easier to get feedback during self-study when you do
> something like math or physics (where the correct answers are often
> provided at the end of the book) than when you study one of the humanities.
This is a very good point - so much of achieving the basics of a "liberal
education" and its benefits (which are great) is a matter of relatively
slowly building up a faculty of good judgment in the extremely complex
spheres of culture that are the subjects of such training. Without the
feedback function you talk about here, Nick, it's nearly impossible not to
fall prey to overly simple ideas and values.
Other important benefits of studying philosophy derive from mastering the
concepts in their historical order and cultural contexts. The first of these
factors teaches that there is in fact a progress in the growth of knowledge
and wisdom. Study of the dialectical progression of ideas in their
historical order yields important insights into how the ideas themselves work
and their relative merits. (I'm thinking in particular of the back-and-forth
"dialogue" between "idealists" like Plato and the Scholastics and
"empiricists" like Aristotle and Hume; or the 19th Century German idealists
like Hegel and the American pragmatists like Dewey.)
Beyond this, studying philosophy as part of an analysis of history yields a
vital understanding of the importance of ideas and the role that they play in
society, as well as the influence that events "in the world" have on ideas.
The former bestows on the student a sense of the importance of "big ideas",
while the latter helps to cultivate a strong sense of skepticism and the deep
interconnectedness of life and the world.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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