Trying To Teach

[jacassidy2 0]

I retired so, I've spent the last year studying more - Objectivism and general western philosophy. I post in a general philosophy forum - answering original posts and starting new ones based on fundamental ideas, metaphysics and epistemology. It's odd how most participants just dismiss metaphysics, thinking its new definition is, "ideas that cannot be explained by physics"- sort of like a synonym for the paranormal. Gosh, how bad it has become. Connotation vs. denotation? This distinction should not exist in metaphysics.

And so, I have decided for now, based on this experience, that the current enemy is pragmatism. I know that this way of thinking is not a primary (Kant and then Plato came before) but I think it is the underpinning of everything I see in the arguments I am trying to counter. I know that appeals against pure rationalism or pure empiricism are the meat of the counter-argument.

Peikoff's latest book did a great job of integrating the ideas in philosophy into concepts that can be examined in the context of each other and of historical philosophy ideas. I'm guessing someone will take Peikoff's work and use it to integrate even beyond Peikoff's conclusions. The sign of a great work.

Senses, integration into percepts, abstraction into concepts, integration/abstraction into higher concepts - it seems so obvious, especially when you reduce it to the adult/equivalent of the development of a human infant mind.

And so, EVO, Betsy, and others I respect - what should we do? I need a reasonable direction.

[ewv 0]

And so, I have decided for now, based on this experience, that the current enemy is pragmatism. I know that this way of thinking is not a primary (Kant and then Plato came before) but I think it is the underpinning of everything I see in the arguments I am trying to counter. I know that appeals against pure rationalism or pure empiricism are the meat of the counter-argument.

You are right about pragmatism and its current role and source. Search for discussions of pragmatism on the Forum. You have already listened to the lecture on Pragmatism in Leonard Peikoff's history of philosophy series so you can now understand much better anything else you read about it. Read the two books on pragmatism referred to in this Forum post:

Bruce Kuklick, The Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930, and

Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America.

Read Arthur Ekirch's The Decline of American Liberalism, especially in this context his chapter on how pragmatism has been the basis of progressivism.

... - what should we do? I need a reasonable direction.

In general, review "What Can One Do?", The Ayn Rand Letter, January 3, 1972, reprinted in Philosophy: Who Needs It.

There are many different directions you can apply this to. With your interest, apply it to combating pragmatism and its implications. First, keep learning everything you can, and learn how to explain it, i.e., connect it with what others already know so they can expand into what they want to understand. Choose your battles carefully. Don't assume that creatures who inhabit the depths of general philosophy forums have the same idea of what philosophy is that you do, or that a rationalist or mystical psycho-epistemology is any longer capable of understanding yours. Look for contexts to apply and explain your ideas where more common sense people anywhere are looking for answers.

[Arnold 0]

The argument should not JUST depend on logic. First the principle that the argument is based on should be put to the test, and that test determines how well it is tied to reality. That in turn depends on their metaphysics, or their understanding of reality. IOW one cannot use logic against someone with a mystical metaphysics. As I often say to the JWs that come to the door, I can only offer you evidence from this world, while you claim I must accept evidence from a world only you can see.

[lidryn 0]

I've got a couple of questions about this, if you'd care to talk about them: the teaching aspect, not the pragmatism.

First of all, what sort of relationship with the student do you envision, or encourage, when you engage them as a teacher? What do you expect from them? What do offer them?

Second, or fourth, how do you identify students? Are they respondents to the posts you make? Do you then continue, or propose to continue, the instruction by some other means: direct contact of some form?

I'm thinking of two problems here: one, I don't see the posting of a lecture/essay as a teaching engagement as such - a necessary tool certainly, but the transaction is "I talk - you listen" so there must be something to follow that which would be more engaging? The other problem is alluded to in ewv's comment: "chose your battles carefully". I think this is a tactic more relevant to engagements in the Agora rather than the Academy - you want to keep control of the direction of the discourse if you're engaged in instruction, but in most forums of discussion, the assumption seems to be more rhetorical contest than pedagogical.

If the realtionship between the teacher and the student is perceived as a "battle" then I think both sides lose.

[A N Other 0]

I second the recommendation of "The Metaphysical Society". I hear the voice of Oliver Wendell Holmes mocking every one of us who respect - or would respect - the rule of reason.

I teach a personal finance class to people who, for the most part, have been really beaten up by life, most starting over, some just graduated from poor high schools. I start with them reading the title essay, 'Philosophy: Who Needs It" and later "Inflation" from the same collection. Then all quarter I try to be relentless about picking out things we read and hear in the Post Modernist press and demonstrating to them the lack of respect for reality therein and the consequences for their lives, which they can plainly see.

[lidryn 0]

I second the recommendation of "The Metaphysical Society". I hear the voice of Oliver Wendell Holmes mocking every one of us who respect - or would respect - the rule of reason.

I teach a personal finance class to people who, for the most part, have been really beaten up by life, most starting over, some just graduated from poor high schools. I start with them reading the title essay, 'Philosophy: Who Needs It" and later "Inflation" from the same collection. Then all quarter I try to be relentless about picking out things we read and hear in the Post Modernist press and demonstrating to them the lack of respect for reality therein and the consequences for their lives, which they can plainly see.

How do you approach the teaching of "personal finance" - the motivation of your students is certainly not an issue! I'd particularly like to know what topics you cover, and the relative weights: do you spend more time on fundamental budgeting and expense management than, say, shopping for cars or insurance? The philosophical approach could be very useful in encouraging the long-term view needed to sustain investment (as an attitude).

Of course, if you have to play the hand you're dealt (a pre-set curriculum), you may be accomplishing as much as can be done, under the circumstances.

I know some people who are organizing a class on this topic, and it would be interesting to see what philosophical perspectives could be incorporated. I must say, though, that the criticism of the Usual Suspects (MSM?) would not be a good fit here - maybe in a Mass Media class, or Economics...

[A N Other 0]

The motivation of some students is an issue; I get people who are going to school just to get financial aid. They just signed up for a course someone told them to take. I get about 25% who are really motivated; people who lost jobs, lost everything; people in their 40's, 50's, occasinaly 60's. I point out to them something they already know, at some level, that whatever they do, the cost is their lives; that nothing is free and everything has a cost and that they should be keeping score in terms of their own values; and that a lack of care and work on their financial affairs can result in the waste of their lives. I do my best to show them that they can be usefully literate in the areas of knowledge that matter, something not many other people tell them.

The greatest challenge is to get them to appreciate the power of a few big ideas: risk, with all its faces in both the real and financial realms; the real vs. the financial economies and how and when to be attentive to the different forms of risk and reward in each; and how to be attentive to what they hear, see and read and how to be critical thinkers about such matters.

The "big picture" is always the biggest problem and the area of greatest need. Most of the people I get are so concrete bound they can't usefully think about the end of next month. Budgeting, investing and time value of money analysis are the three big areas where I direct the focus. Fourth, I am working on a model of how working class people can thnk about the economy. It is based on an understanding first of the interest rate and then looks at the behavior of rates of return over time along with the behavior of GDP, inflation and employment; what we knew as the business cycle before 2008.

It all sounds pretty grand for a 10 week class for mostly working class and welfare class people; but if material is presented in terms they understand and in examples they see around them, it comes together for most of them.

The materials I am given want to focus on shopping, car loans, insurance, mortgages and so on and I cover those. But they are already functionally literate in those areas and actually need little work there compared to budgeting, investing, retirement planning and most of all sitting back and appraising the economic/business environment and constantly asking what's true? What might the consequences be?

Hence the use of the Rand essays and a few other pieces. I hope this helps some; I'm in the process of reengineering the course right now and I constantly question what I'm doing and what will benefit those who take it seriously. I tell them a true story: when I hired into the bank as a teller and worked for little money in the early years, there were paternalistic old guys who put away money in a profit sharing plan we couldn't touch. That money, invested at compound interest that early in my working career became the core of the wealth I have today that permits me to live well. Their long term perspective has been a blessing to me. I tell them in today's world they have to be their own Old Guys.

[ewv 0]

I've got a couple of questions about this, if you'd care to talk about them: the teaching aspect, not the pragmatism. First of all, what sort of relationship with the student do you envision, or encourage, when you engage them as a teacher? What do you expect from them? What do offer them?

This thread started with a question about how to proceed in posting to a general philosophy forum in order to explain and spread better ideas, not formal teaching to students in a classroom. There are several threads on the Forum where you can find discussion about education in schools and universities.

The other problem is alluded to in ewv's comment: "chose your battles carefully". I think this is a tactic more relevant to engagements in the Agora rather than the Academy - you want to keep control of the direction of the discourse if you're engaged in instruction, but in most forums of discussion, the assumption seems to be more rhetorical contest than pedagogical. If the realtionship between the teacher and the student is perceived as a "battle" then I think both sides lose.

"Choose your battles carefully" is a common enough phrase understood as carefully selecting where you will spend your time and resources where it is important enough to be worth it compared to what else you could be doing, and where you have some chance of success. It doesn't mean picking fights with people and it doesn't mean teachers fighting with students. That there is a "battle for the culture" does not mean that you should pick fights with people and try to dominate them in order to get them on your side.

Ayn Rand frequently employed phrases like "philosophical battle" and "fighting for a better world". In "Philosophy: Who Needs It" she wrote, for example, "The battle of philosophers is a battle for man's mind."

I have never encountered anyone who thought that she meant by that picking fights with people in order to persuade them, let alone dominate them with militarist orders in Agora. Neither did I. To provide the full context I wrote:

First, keep learning everything you can, and learn how to explain it, i.e., connect it with what others already know so they can expand into what they want to understand. Choose your battles carefully. Don't assume that creatures who inhabit the depths of general philosophy forums have the same idea of what philosophy is that you do, or that a rationalist or mystical psycho-epistemology is any longer capable of understanding yours. Look for contexts to apply and explain your ideas where more common sense people anywhere are looking for answers.

In the essay "What Can One Do" which I cited above Ayn Rand wrote:

If you are seriously interested in fighting for a better world, begin by identifying the nature of the problem. The battle is primarily intellectual (philosophical), not political. Politics is the last consequence, the practical implementation, of the fundamental (metaphysical-epistemological-ethical) ideas that dominate a given nation's culture. You cannot fight or change the consequences without fighting and changing the cause; nor can you attempt any practical implementation without knowing what you want to implement.

and

A philosophical battle is a battle for men's minds, not an attempt to enlist blind followers. Ideas can be propagated only by men who understand them. An organized movement has to be preceded by an educational campaign, which requires trained—self-trained—teachers (self-trained in the sense that a philosopher can offer you the material of knowledge, but it is your own mind that has to absorb it).

and

A political battle is merely a skirmish fought with muskets; a philosophical battle is a nuclear war.

The metaphor conveyed a degree and scope of the importance of fundamental ideas, not incinerating people.

[ewv 0]

... I am working on a model of how working class people can thnk about the economy. It is based on an understanding first of the interest rate and then looks at the behavior of rates of return over time along with the behavior of GDP, inflation and employment; what we knew as the business cycle before 2008.

It all sounds pretty grand for a 10 week class for mostly working class and welfare class people; but if material is presented in terms they understand and in examples they see around them, it comes together for most of them.

The materials I am given want to focus on shopping, car loans, insurance, mortgages and so on and I cover those. But they are already functionally literate in those areas and actually need little work there compared to budgeting, investing, retirement planning and most of all sitting back and appraising the economic/business environment and constantly asking what's true? What might the consequences be?

Hence the use of the Rand essays and a few other pieces. I hope this helps some; I'm in the process of reengineering the course right now and I constantly question what I'm doing and what will benefit those who take it seriously. I tell them a true story: when I hired into the bank as a teller and worked for little money in the early years, there were paternalistic old guys who put away money in a profit sharing plan we couldn't touch. That money, invested at compound interest that early in my working career became the core of the wealth I have today that permits me to live well. Their long term perspective has been a blessing to me. I tell them in today's world they have to be their own Old Guys.

Be careful with terminology like "working class" and "welfare class", even as shorthand terminology. People who are far better off than themselves have "worked" all their lives, and there are no Marxist "classes" in this country. We don't have a caste society, although the statism and collectivism are driving it towards that as it keeps people down and provides growing privilege for a political class. The people in your educational classroom are all individuals and all different. They are in your classroom and in their current circumstances for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with their own choices and actions over a long period, resulting in their never getting their "act together"..

There are similarities between them which you have observed and which you can exploit in tailoring the material you teach and how you teach it, as you are doing. But try to explain along the way that they are individuals, not a determined economic and political "class" bound to be in certain 'unfair' conditions -- this despite all the class warfare rhetoric they hear around them all the time from demagogues trying to promote envy and resentment in an attempt to emotionally manipulate people and stampede them into going after those who have been targeted and demonized by the demagogues. They are egalitarian nihilists trying to drag us all down to a lowest common denominator as dependents under the boot of their own political ruling class. Properly understanding and dealing with interest rates and car loans won't save them from that, and it is precisely such financial matters that the left will try to buy them off with through government subsidies.

[A N Other 0]

ewv - you are right in the cautions you offer; a danger of working as and where I do is to use such language less carefully than I should.

One of my biggest frustrations is that the many of people I have in class understand the game that's being played against them by the elites; too often they don't know how to fight it. But I do take every chance to remind them that they succeed as individuals and I have a store of "war stories" I can tell, stories among people the elites are desperate to make permanent dependents.

So I have one venue in which to explain and spread better ideas and I'm doing with it what I can. Converting the elites is just one strategey; they don't often seem have the same sense of direct personal stakes that my students have.