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ED4001 Why what you know is wrong

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26Enough… to make a philosopher despair

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A mature student discovering the light

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G. W. F. Hegel

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1. Natural consciousness Takes the world or itself to be exactly as it immediately appears.

2. Philosophical consciousness Philosophical consciousness is always the destruction of one of the appearances of natural consciousness.

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Natural consciousness (or common sense)‘lifeless indifference’‘thoughtless rambling’

…is unstable‘unhappy consciousness’ starts to recognise that ‘this contradiction between the universal and contingent exists within itself’ ‘Unhappy Consciousness is the gazing of one self-consciousness into another, itself is both the unity of both, is also its essential nature. But it is not as yet explicitly aware that this is its essential nature, or that it is the unity of both’ (Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit)

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Philosophical consciousness

• highly ‘negative’• is ‘the pathway of doubt, or more

precisely the way of despair’• ‘the conscious insight into the

untruth of (its) phenomenal knowledge’

• a dialectical process• ‘aufhebung’ (lifting

up/abolishing/sublating one ‘position’ with another)

• often wisdom arrives retrospectively: ‘The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk’.

(Hegel, Philosophy of Right)

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Common Sense: An Obituary (from The Times)

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Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: - Knowing when to come in out of the rain; - Why the early bird gets the worm; - Life isn't always fair; - and maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights I Want It Now Someone Else Is To Blame I'm A Victim Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

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That is why what you know is wrong.That is why you will know less having completed your degree.

1. Common sense (‘natural consciousness’) used above is a term for a set of unacknowledged political, social and ethical preferences (about the horrors of an over-indulgent state, family values, the benefits of discipline, self-reliance and conservative politics).

2. Common sense doesn’t ask what non-common sense might be like nor whether this might be preferable (‘truer’) knowledge.

3. Philosophy is about the distrustful habit of looking at knowledge and conventional wisdom, a sense that ‘one is at the beginning of the disciplined, critical and reflective thinking is the mark of educational research’.

4. It is an epistemological position that would place critical reasoning at the fore: ‘…a questioning and critical approach to what was accepted uncritically, a refusal to accept as self-evident what is generally believed to be true, a reflective and analytic attitude towards the fund of inherited wisdom’ (Prof Richard Pring).

5. Thus as you grow academically expect to find contradictions, know you know less than you thought you knew, grow accustomed to arguing (not only with yourself).

6. BUT… even philosophers, espousing the negation of the negation, trust! Besides, when would a philosopher choose to ‘act’ in the world knowing the inevitability of their partiality?

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next time• Why arguing is important• What argument is• Why we don’t do it well• Aristotle on rhetoric• Toulmin on argument• Practices of argument in educational contexts

(‘pupil voice’ ‘school councils’ ‘reps’)