Maatukathe I Session 1

Minutes of Session 1: 17.02.2013

Some preliminary considerations about thinking and intellectual inquiry

• Do questions have assumptions behind them?
  • They do, but most often the assumptions are not clear. Bringing those assumptions to the fore is the task of critical thinking. So, for example, the question "who created the universe?" assumes that someone should have created it. To answer why this question cannot be asked in that way is to understand the assumptions behind it. 
• Our explanations and questions are in fact specific models of the relevant parts of the world which they examine. Identifying such a model involves going into the history of the model. Therefore, understanding the assumptions behind our inquiry has, for this reason, a necessary historical aspect to it. And all history-writing involves some element of construction and reconstruction of facts, domains, ideas, causalities and so on. this implies that we need to attend to the process of this construction. Since this construction is in and through language, it is important to attend to the linguistic aspect of such a history. Our language use is not innocent. It is already overlaid with different kinds of assumptions and different preferences for cutting the world up in one or the other shape. This is not necessarily an error, but an issue to be attended to. Our word-use is dependent significantly on other words and no isolated use of worlds is possible. Our words form a semantic web where every element alters the configuration of the whole system. This is the crucial difference between artificial languages and natural languages: in artificial languages connectors (relational terms like: and, if, then, or, not, iff) have well-defined meanings whereas in natural languages these meanings are not well-defined. Most often words are used assuming the stability of meaning of other words surrounding those words.
• Therefore, the provisional definition of philosophical reflection
  • an attentive and mindful use of those very terms and concepts we routinely use or take for granted in our everyday practice.
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  • which involves identifying vagueness and underlying assumptions behind our language use
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  • in which becoming aware of our questions in the very process of questioning is part of the philosophical enterprise.

• What is this course not about?
  • Research methodology
  • Topics in the discipline of philosophy of science (for example, causality, explanation, induction, deduction etc)
  • Introduction to any specific research programme
• The General Problematic
  • An intuitive distinction between 'a good life widely desire' versus 'a good life worthy of desire'
    • Leading us to ask and inquire about the true nature of good life which might even transcend our immediate life, here and now, and could include a sense of the 'Nachwelt', as something involving the considerations of posterity
• General Questions of the course
  • What are the enabling conditions for leading a life of learning?
  • What are the ways of cultivating the ethos of seeking knowledge together?
  • Under what conditions is the social activity of knowledge as also its enhancement is possible?
  • What kind of institutions are required for it to operate?
  • How to generate a milieu of discussion on conditions required to lead a life of learning?
• Presuppositions
  • There is a social dimension to "swaadhyaaya" (individual studiousness) which involves more than personal discipline, conscientiousness etc. Some social processes help and others hinder this process.
  • The idea of "art" (understood in its older sense as disciplinary knowledge)can be collectively improved. The question is 'how' and 'under what conditions'.
  • Knowledge or art seen in this sense is a social disposition and not expertise about a given data-set. Such a disposition is available in common and is improvable by social cooperation.
  • An "ethos", an institutional setting, which will prevent individual interests from harming the progress of a discipline.
  • Reflective conversation on experiences undergone and mistakes committed by the individuals so as to enrich the collective experience of the community
• Our metaphors of knowledge and its implications
  • Like a building
    • Some concepts and premises are foundational and are basic to other concepts and premises in a structured hierarchy
  • Like a web
    • Concepts are interlinked in a seamless network
  • Like a snowball
    • Repetition is not redundant but helps in reworking the understanding
• Outline of the educational landscape of India to assess sites of learning outside the formal system
  • Tourism, museums, sports, monasteries, temples etc
    • Seeing such institutions and activities as educational sites enables us to ask how can it be made better? By what standards and to what ends. So, for example, seeing sports as education for health and not merely as training for athletic competitions enables one to reorient our discussions about sports