Maatukathe IV, Session 2

Maatukathe IV, Session 2

Ninasam, Heggodu

April 28, 2016

Minutes: Elizabeth Thomas

How do we characterise a life of learning? We can say that shaping a Life of learning is not for scholarly pursuits alone, it is equally part of all sorts of pursuits as part of leading a good life. In such an engagement having knowledge can be reframed as possessing dispositions/skills rather than as having information. Knowledge can be seen as art (skill/discipline, which is an action disposition. An action disposition is a propensity to act in a particular way. Such dispositions are available in common and are improvable by social cooperation. Knowledge thus is an action disposition - improvable and available in common.

We can make a subtle distinction between habit and disposition. While both dispositions and habits are acquired, it is possible to drill in habits but not dispositions. Zen Buddhism talks about idea of control of emotions, of the body, but it is not about controlling the will, but mastering of the senses in closely observing things, without active involvement. One can say habits in which one is able to exercise such control is part of an ethos.

Most human dispositions are acquired, and thus require both a milieu of learning and active cultivation. Even natural human dispositions such as language learning needs a milieu. An individual is born in and through socio-cultural processes, which are i) cultural- cultivated habits and ethos and ii) mediated through signs and schemes.

What is a sign or scheme? A sign is that which fulfils a communicating role. Action by its nature is a sign.  Identifying a structure in an action is a scheme. For instance, mentally processing the different stages of cooking a dish, or observing someone drinking water is to schematize. Here scheme could be a succession of acts or a spatial pattern.  Another example is two people raising their hands, they have performed the same action, actualised the same scheme. Schemes are there in maps, visual things, concepts and perceptions, since even perceptions involves making distinctions. We can therefore say, socialization or education involves:

1) a scheme of distinctions

2) certain instruments/ abilities to use them

3) and standards of judgment about the right use

Our everyday life involves concepts and distinctions and so does any form of specialized knowledge whether that of an academic, a carpenter, doctor, musician and so on. Each distinction involves a learning situation. Every learner is in an act of imitation and knows how to distinguish relevant and irrelevant actions in the course of scheme building. The learning process involves a performance, that is, repetition of another's action. The repetition involved in performance or replicating an action requires a scheme of actualization.

Operating with concepts

'Operating with concepts' is a term of art / technical term for making distinctions through perceptual schemes or words or concepts or more generally signs.  Perceptual scheme have precedence over conceptual scheme, because the latter requires language. In contrast to this formulation, the dominant epistemological tradition says that in the process of understanding, first sensory perception happens and then interpretation takes place. Instead we can say perceptual schemes are available and one is already making distinctions in the process of seeing something.  Scheme acquisition is thus a way of seeing something.

A situation, action, person can be introduced through - description as well as acquaintance. Words are deeds first, descriptions only secondarily. Example, Calling out 'fire!' presents a situation than merely a word.

We learn concepts through various methods. Through a) socialization;  b) deliberate learning;

c) deliberate construction- that is introduction of  a term and delimiting its use; d) deliberate reconstruction, re-configuring of knowledge already received

Deconstruction, that is breaking down an idea to everyday language ,and reconstruction, re-building it into a more economical concept, are the accustomed concepts of the elite/ educated discourse (bildungssprace). In this process however, a number of scientific terminologies of a discipline oozes into everyday life. Eg. Acidity or Gravity

The construction of concepts and models can be grasped through the following structure. Let us say we are simultaneously part of three possible worlds:

1) The lived world :  This world depends on one's knowledge and horizon of thinking. So say a Pandit Nehru or Garcia Marquez dying will make an impact on a person only if these figures are part of their lived world. Similarly if we say 'It didn’t rain in Saurashtra/ or Bangalore this summer' that has some implications for your lived world. The lived world is the accustomed environment and ways of dealing with it. Typically misunderstandings and miscommunications occur between people because  their lived  worlds are different from each other's.

2) The world we live: This is the milieu or environment in which we are embedded, where lots of things might happen on which we have no direct control or interest, nevertheless these contain institutions in which we are embedded and the past of oneself and one's environment.

3) The world we aspire to live in : Most of our activities and everyday projects are directed towards this aspired world.

Social and Natural sciences attempt to grasp the world we live in through constructing concepts from the lived world.

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To further understand the importance of the distinctions of The lived world and The world we live in a text from the New York Times editorial, 'Why the Post office makes America Great'  was discussed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/opinion/why-the-post-office-makes-america-great.html?_r=0

The discussion was about the importance of properly functioning public institutions such as post offices, libraries, museums and such other to our everyday lives. We attempted to probe using  examples and anecdotes what makes certain institutions successful and why certain others don’t function as well. Examples were drawn from different domains like urban planning and residential architecture, environment sustenance projects, flourishing of libraries and reading culture in various spaces. It was noticed that one of the marks of  thriving institutions as well as projects is attention to logistics and human cooperation. The text shows that one distinct characteristic of the American post office is the trust they have been able to build among their customers over the years, perhaps a clear contrast to Turkey (an example the text cites) and India. It was noted that even recent innovations in the postal sector in India is based on by-passing the human quotient by depending on the success of technological applications. This is not to say Indians or the Turks are not trustworthy, but that coordination and cooperation at various systemic levels has not been paid attention to in these places. 

Maatukathe IV, Session 3

Maatukathe IV, Session 3 

Ninasam, Heggodu

April 29, 2016 

Minutes: Lakshmi Arya 

The day began with a discussion of a movie screened the previous evening (Inspector Barnaby). Parallels were drawn between the investigative processes by which Inspector Barnaby arrives at the truth, and the processes of research, in which each of us, as research scholars, are engaged. The similarities observed can be clustered under the following heads: (a) the formulation of the right question (subject to correction and revision); (b) the procedures by which we arrive at answers, which involve methods of investigation, and sifting through relevant (as opposed to irrelevant) clues or information; and (c) proposing a narrative / hypothesis.

The rest of the sessions picked up on the theme of the slogans regarding India, which had been introduced the previous day. First, the idea of the Constitution was discussed. There were two levels at which this discussion was initiated: One was a textual analysis of parts of the Preamble of the Constitution, and the other was its location in the context of the liberal tradition of the 19th century. Liberalism is a particularly 19th century tradition of thought. There was a reference to Barzun’s periodization of developments in the West: If the 16th century was the time of religious revolution in the West, the 17th, that of monarchical revolution, the 19th century was the age of liberal individualism. 

It was emphasized that the Constitution is a contract, agreed to by all the people of India. Parts of this contract are inviolable: the fundamental rights. It was also emphasized that the Constitutional document makes sense within the intellectual context of the 19th century. The 19th century was when the idea of nation was articulated in parts of Europe. Inextricable from this idea, is that of the citizen; someone who is no longer subject to an emperor, but a subject of the state: A citizen-subject. The King, likewise, goes from being the sovereign to the first servant. The purpose of education undergoes a transformation too, in line with the other transitions towards nation-building. Education becomes the pre-condition of being a responsible citizen. The purpose of education, in other words, is to produce a responsible citizen. To achieve this end, institutions are established in the 19th century. Institutions like the University, museums, and symphony orchestras are all educative in this sense. 

These 19th century ideas have relevance for India. Macaulay’s idea of educating Indians had this end as well: It was meant to turn out citizens. Hence his debate with the Orientalists on what classics should be part of higher education in India? The Orientalists, who had recently discovered the Indian textual tradition, were of the view that education should be in the Indian classics. Macaulay’s disagreement with them was that these classics could not produce citizens. It was also noted that the 19th century had another prevalent idea: that of civilization. The work of the Orientalists contributed to this idea, by re-discovering the ancient Indian and Chinese civilisations. They found that there were other Ancients, much like their own Greeks and the Romans, in India and China. One of the slogans identified in the previous day’s sessions (that of India being an ancient civilisation) has this contextual significance. 

The idea of transition is captured in another of the ‘slogans’ identified in the previous day’s sessions: That Indian is a developing country. Development here is shorthand for transition, or a set of transitions towards modernity. When we say development, we usually think economic development. However, only part of this ‘development’ is economic: the movement from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. There are various other transitions: The re-arrangement of social relations along a contractual model, the replacement of kingships with a liberal-democratic form of state; the recognition of individual rights (i.e. the centrality of individual as the bearer of rights); likewise, a recognition of human rights; and, finally, in terms of knowledge-production, the giving up of myths for scientific inquiry. Thus, there were a range of transitions: Economic, social, political, and epistemic.

To return to the idea of the Constitution as contract, it was observed that contracts are open to dispute. Indeed, many of the political disputes that have wracked modern India have taken place within the Constitutional framework. The discussion among the participants centred around two such disputes: Universal temple entry and the Ramjanmabhoomi controversy. The debate around temple entry takes this form: Everyone (women, Dalits) should be allowed to enter temples, because they are public spaces. This debate does not make sense outside of the idea of the ‘public’. The social contract very fundamentally makes a distinction between public and private spheres. The public sphere is the domain of citizenship; it is where we are all citizens, irrespective of what we are in our private spheres (Hindus, Muslims, women, Dalits, tribes). If temples are public spaces, it follows that all citizens must have access to them. Within this discourse, other ideas of temples and the rituals connected with them, seem incongruous and even ridiculous: The idea, for instance, that women cannot enter the Aiyappa temple, because the god there has chosen a celibate life, and does not want to look upon women. There are various iterations of the idea of the public in contemporary India: Public health, public decency / morality, public reason (the sphere where issues are debated and discussed). 

Another fundamental premise of the social contract is that of harm: The harm that citizens can cause one another. As a legal dispute, the Ramjanmabhoomi controversy takes these contours. There is a person who is harmed, and that person is Ram Lalla. Most modern disputes are articulated within this Constitutional framework in India, insofar as they all evoke ideas of rights, public access, and harm. Another example was taken to illustrate this: The debates around the beef ban. Some Muslim groups have contended that the beef ban violates their right to work. This takes the beef issue out of the domain of culture (and its public or private nature) to the relatively neutral terrain of work. I am reminded of a similar turn to the abortion debate in Australia: The framing of the abortion issue as one of public health, and access to it, and not as one of religion versus secular citizenship for women.

There is a certain sense of universality that is associated with the idea of the public, of citizenship and of fundamental rights. It supposedly includes everyone, leaving out nobody. Yet, there is an innate contradiction in liberalism. The discussion pointed out this contradiction. If free speech, as a fundamental right, were granted to everyone, there would be no free speech. As Milton famously said, the Catholics could not be given free speech, because if they were, they would not allow it, having no conception of free speech themselves. Another contradiction lies in the idea of freedom itself. If freedom were absolute, everyone would not have it. Some groups would oppress others, as happens in a capitalist society. Liberal ‘universal’ freedom necessarily excludes some, in order to sustain itself. 

Given that the predominant framework of conducting disputes and discussions in contemporary India is the liberal, democratic, Constitutional framework, what is the role of the academician? One reflection that emerged was that the role was to make alternatives available. To create milieus of discussion which draw upon traditions other than the liberal one. To create other conversations; indeed to have other forms of mathukathe.

Maatukathe IV, Session 1

Maatukathe IV, Session 1 

Ninasam, Heggodu

April 27, 2016 

Minutes: Shashikala Srinivasan

Mathukathe began with the recapitulation of the questions animating the sessions so far: what it is to lead a good life (how to live well and responsibly) and how to lead a life of learning. Living well involves a) reflection on our actions and conditions under which we live b) the awareness that life goes on before, during and after reflection which means actions cannot be indefinitely postponed.

A distinction was made between engagement as a citizen (grahastha – one who sustains family and society) versus enquirer. Two logically distinct types of reflection were singled out: Deliberation to decide versus reflection to make alternatives available. While the former is used in executive function, the latter is mainly used in advisory functions. While reflection involves mapping different alternatives, deciding involves fixing one alternatives among others. Often the process involves the capacity to judge which objectives (ends) are right and which means are appropriate.

Another important point reiterated was that we inherit Customs, Institutions and the accompanying language to talk about them which together form “traditions.” As we grow up, we get acquainted with and accustomed to:

• A Habitat (distinguished into objects, events, customs and institutions
• Some grade of knowing how to deal with it
• Some grade of knowing how to use the language accompanying it.

Language here functions as a scheme of distinction and our experience is structured through these schemes of distinctions passed on to us.  How do these distinctions come into play? Not through deliberately constructed theories for we can we can switch from one set of distinction to another. These distinctions are passed on to us through use.  

The session then moved on to the conditions that sustain and make the way/s we live possible. We were asked to visualize the “globalized world” at a different time (in the form of a thought experiment). The attempt was to lay out a scheme to distinguish times and worlds. The question “What does it mean to speak about our ways of living depend on certain conditions that sustain our world” was posed.  Different kinds of institutions/environment - social (families, schools, castes, clubs), legal and political (courts, parliament), economic (farms, factories, markets), technical and infrastructural environment (roads, railways, internet , gas, electricity) as well as semiotic preconditions (traffic lights, railways signals, standardized languages and scripts)  were listed as various kinds of institutions/systems required to make communication across space and time possible. Systems of representations such as calendars, maps are required to coordinate activities across time and place and these are conditions that sustain and  make the way we live possible today.

Next, the question “What kind of life of learning and institutions to accompany it exist?” was posed. Various kinds of semiotic skills were and arts were listed: a) The art of articulation, persuasion and argumentation b) The art of interpretation. The academic institutions, libraries, museums, parks, reserve forests etc...and corresponding ethos and legal structures are the accompanying institutions to make possible the corresponding forms of life of learning.

We become what we are, mainly by Learning.  Learning takes place in an environment shaped by our past/s or our traditions. Since we are Macaulay’s children, our inheritance, broadly can be classified in to two sets of traditions: The Indian – the family background, rituals, practices around us that govern our everyday life and the Western comprising most of our institutions of governance and education.

Conceiving the task of education, particularly higher education involves the notion of maturing into wisdom.  It involves the acquisition for a capacity for judgement through life long practice and reflection. Often higher education as academic study is distinguished from learning through apprenticeship and training for a job. It involves the acquisition of theoretical competence and competence to do research.

Higher education can be seen as a process of initiating one into themes, questions and forms of enquiry along with the traditions in which they are embedded. How are questions and themes related to enquiry?  Investigation presupposes adequately clear questions. The clarity of the questions depends on the contexts they have. Theoretical questions may be inspired by practical issues in one’s milieu such as reservations, notion of social justice and therefore may be more difficult to resolve. Notions of academic freedom likely to be embedded in intellectual traditions. Contexts can include intellectual traditions and not just spatial and temporal but to be understood in terms of conceptual unpacking.

Post-lunch Session

The afternoon session was a brain-storming on expectations by way of discussing a text by Adam Alter, Popular Science, in http://thepointmag.com/2014/criticism/popular-science. Two ways of approaching the world through disciplines were distinguished: a) where one has a broad-based approach and focuses on information and content, often cutting across disciplinary boundaries b) burrowing /covering a narrow field in greater depth and showing how large effects grow from small, with effects often cutting across disciplines. The importance of good science writing consisting “not the sharing of particular ideas, but the sharing of general approaches to perceiving the world” was emphasized. 

The discussion was linked to the purpose of higher education which is train more than a “specialist.” While it was recognized that no teaching could be possible without particular ideas, the point however, was always general.  Whether the skill of reasoning in one field makes possible easy forays into other disciplines was taken up. The idea of research as operating with concepts was put forward.  Questions such as what is it to enter a discipline, what is it shift from the language of one discipline to another, what is it to fit into a particular scheme of distinctions, its histories and connections were raised. The fragility and inadequacy of conceptual distinctions the moment we enter new surroundings was highlighted with examples.

The last session of the day focussed on “Grasping the World and the times we live in” and introduced the “givens” or the preconditions of the way we live today. This was captured in the form of recurring slogans to reflect on:

• We live in a world of nation-states enmeshed by globalized network of trade and production chains
• India is a developing country
• India is a constitutional democratic republic
• India has one of the ancient civilizations

Both Science and Polity are constantly remade

• In case of science reconstruction of the predicates passed on from the past
• In case of political associations, the re-designing of the institutions passed on from the past.
• The task is that of evolving the appropriate standards

The next few sessions would probe into the implications of these slogans.