ED 506

Philosophy of Education

DISCUSSANTS: Marni Hamili B. DieronRey Jun C. DieronRowena A. Dichosa Jona P. Lacsi

CONTEMPORARY REALISM

Whitehead, Russell, Putnam & Searle

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)

• Whitehead's philosophy of education emphasizes the idea that a good life is most profitably thought of as an educated or civilized life

• As we think, we live. Thus it is only as we improve our thoughts that we improve our lives

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)

• “There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations”

• Whitehead emphasizes the importance of remembering that a “pupil's mind is a growing organism ... it is not a box to be ruthlessly packed with alien ideas”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)

• Instead, it is the purpose of education to stimulate and guide each student's self-development. It is not the job of the educator simply to insert into his students' minds little chunks of knowledge.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)

• any adequate education must include a literary component, a scientific component and a technical component

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) • Literary component -

includes, not just the study of language, but also the study of high achievement in human thought and writing

• Scientific component - includes practice in the observation of natural phenomena as well as exposure to the testing of theories and of the presumed law-like connections we find in the natural world

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)

• Technical component - focuses primarily on the “art of utilizing knowledge”, especially in the production of goods but also in any area of so-called knowledge application

• The good life requires, not just accomplishment, but also the stimulus to create, and participate in, an improved, more civilized society.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)

• Whitehead sees education as necessarily encouraging the marriage of thought with action. As he puts it, “No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)

• a longtime collaborator of fellow philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead. Together, they composed the massive Principia Mathematica, a masterpiece that established the interconnection between logic and mathematics

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)

• believed that everything we know must be acquired through sensory experience

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)

• “Education is the key to the new world” :

a teacher should endeavor to produce in his pupils, if democracy is to survive, is the kind of tolerance that springs from an endeavor to understand those who are different from ourselves.

Hilary Putnam (born July 31, 1926)

• Putnam put forward a view about the relation between mind and brain which came to be known as FUNCTIONALISM

Hilary Putnam (born July 31, 1926)

• FUNCTIONALISM:

Functionalism is a materialist position, but unlike other forms of materialism, denies that an organism’s mental states can be simply identified with its underlying brain states. Rather, mental states are states that play a particular CAUSAL ROLE in the organism’s life – and can be realised by many different sorts of underlying physical states

Hilary Putnam (born July 31, 1926)

• FUNCTIONALISM:

So according to functionalism, an organism can be in pain (for example) even if its neurophysiological make-up is totally different to our own – even if it is made of silicon. Pain is simply the state-of-the-organism that is caused by certain environmental inputs, e.g. coming into contact with fire, and causes the organism to have certain other mental states, e.g. fear, and to behave in certain ways, e.g. wincing.

Hilary Putnam (born July 31, 1926)

• FUNCTIONALISM:

Functionalism is a materialist position, but unlike other forms of materialism, denies that an organism’s mental states can be simply identified with its underlying brain states. Rather, mental states are states that play a particular CAUSAL ROLE in the organism’s life – and can be realised by many different sorts of underlying physical states

Hilary Putnam (born July 31, 1926)

• Internal realism

was the view that, although the world may be causally independent of the human mind, the structure of the world—its division into kinds, individuals and categories—is a function of the human mind, and hence the world is not ontologically independent

John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932)

• Searle unswervingly advocates the thesis of “external” realism

• claim that there is a reality totally independent of our representations - words, be-liefs, perceptions, pictures, maps, etc. There are objects, features, facts and states of affairs that are logically independent of our representations: even if we and all our representations ceased to exist, a large part of what there is would continue to exist unaffected.

John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932)

• In the Chinese Room Argument, Searle developed a provocative argument to show that artificial intelligence is indeed artificial

Chinese Room Argument

A person who knows nothing of the Chinese language is sitting alone in a room. In that room are several boxes containing cards on which Chinese characters of varying complexity are printed, as well as a manual that matches strings of Chinese characters with strings that constitute appropriate responses. On one side of the room is a slot through which speakers of Chinese may insert questions or other messages in Chinese, and on the other is a slot through which the person in the room may issue replies.

Chinese Room Argument

The person in the room, using the manual, acts as a kind of computer program, transforming one string of symbols introduced as “input” into another string of symbols issued as “output.” Searle claims that even if the person in the room is a good processor of messages, so that his responses always make perfect sense to Chinese speakers, he still does not understand the meanings of the characters he is manipulating. Thus, contrary to strong AI, real understanding cannot be a matter of mere symbol manipulation. Like the person in the room, computers simulate intelligence but do not exhibit it.