ONT Priorisms of Normative Sciences
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Priorisms of Normative Sciences
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| Document History
|
| Subject: Inquiry Driven Systems: An Inquiry Into Inquiry
| Contact: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
| Version: Draft 8.75
| Created: 23 Jun 1996
| Revised: 10 Jun 2002
| Advisor: M.A. Zohdy
| Setting: Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA
| Excerpt: 3.2.8 (Priorisms of Normative Sciences)
|
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm
3.2.8. Priorisms of Normative Sciences
Let me start with some questions that continue to puzzle me,
in spite of having spent a considerable spell of time pursuing
their answers, and not for a lack of listening to the opinions
expressed on various sides. I first present these questions as
independently of the current context as I possibly can, and then
I return to justify their relevance to the present inquiry.
The questions that concern me concern the relationships of identity, necessity,
or sufficiency that can be found to hold among three classes of properties or
qualities that can be attributed to or possessed by an agent, and conceivably
passed from one agent to another. The relevant classes of properties or
possessions can be schematized as follows:
T. "Teachings", learnings, lessons, disciplines, doctrines, dogmas,
or things that can be taught and learned, transmitted and received.
U. "Understandings", articles of knowledge, items of comprehension,
bits of potential wisdom that form the possession of knowledge.
V. "Virtues", aspects of accomplished performance, attainments of
demonstrated achievement, qualities of accomplishment, completion,
excellence, mastery, maturity, or relative perfection, "grits" or
integrities that form the exercise of art, justice, and wisdom.
The category of "teachings", as a whole, can be
analyzed and divided into two subcategories:
1. There are "disciplines", which involve elements of action, behavior,
conduct, and instrumental practice in their realization, and thus take
on a fully evaluative, normative, prescriptive, or procedural character.
2. There are "doctrines", which are properly restricted to realms of attitude,
belief, conjecture, knowledge, and speculative theory, and thus take on
a purely descriptive, factual, logical, or declarative character.
The category of "virtues" can be subjected to a parallel analysis, but here it is
not so much the domain as a whole that gets divided into two subcategories as that
each virtue gets viewed in two alternative lights:
1. With regard to its qualities of action, execution, and performance.
2. As it affects its properties of competence, knowledge, and selection.
The reason for this difference in the sense of the analysis that applies
to each is that it is one of the better parts of virtue to bring about
a synthesis between action and knowledge in the very actuality of
the virtue itself.
At this point one arrives at the general question:
What is the logical relation of virtues to teachings?
In particular:
a. Does one category necesarily imply the other?
b. Are the categories mutually exclusive?
c. Do they form independent categories?
Are virtues the species and teachings the genus, or perhaps vice versa?
Or do virtues and teachings form domains that are essentially distinct?
Whether one is a species of the other or whether the two are essentially
different, what are the features that apparently distiguish the one from
the other?
Let me begin by assuming a situation that is plausibly general enough,
that some virtues can be taught, V & T, and that some cannot, V & ~T.
I am not trying to say yet whether both kinds of cases actually occur,
but merely wish to consider what follows from the likely alternatives.
Then the question as to what distinguishes virtues from teachings has
two senses:
1. Among virtues that are special cases of teachings, V & T,
the features that distinguish virtues from teachings are
known as "specific differences". These qualities serve to
mark out virtues for special consideration from amidst the
common herd of teachings and tend to distinguish the more
exemplary species of virtues from the more inclusive genus
of teachings.
2. Among virtues that transcend the realm of teachings, V & ~T,
the features that distinguish virtues from teachings are aptly
called "exclusionary exemptions". These properties place the
reach of virtues beyond the grasp of what is attainable through
any order of teachings and serve to remove the orbit of virtues
a discrete pace from the general run of teachings.
In either case it can always be said, though without contributing anything of
substance to the understanding of the problem, that it is their very property
of "virtuosity" or their very quality of "excellence" that distinguishes the
virtues from the teachings, whether this character appears to do nothing but
add specificity to what can be actualized through learning alone, or solely
through teaching, or whether it requires a nature that transcends the level
of what can be achieved through any learning or teaching at all. But this
sort of answer only begs the question. The real question is whether this
mark is apparent or real, and how it ought to be analyzed and construed.
Assuming a tentative understanding of the categories that I indicated
in the above terms, the questions that I am worried about are these:
1. Did Socrates assert or believe that virtue can be taught, or not?
In symbols, did he assert or believe that V => T, or not?
2. Did he think that:
a. knowledge is virtue, in the sense that U => V ?
b. virtue is knowledge, in the sense that U <= V ?
c. knowledge is virtue, in the sense that U <=> V ?
3. Did he teach or try to teach that knowledge can be taught?
In symbols, did he teach or try to teach that U => T ?
My current understanding of the record that is given to us
in Plato's Socratic Dialogues can be summarized as follows:
At one point Socrates seems to assume the rule that
knowledge can be taught (U => T), but simply in order
to pursue the case that virtue is knowledge (V => U)
toward the provisional conclusion that virtue can be
taught (V => T). This seems straightforward enough,
if it were not for the good chance that all of this
reasoning is taking place under the logical aegis
of an indirect argument, a reduction to absurdity,
designed to show just the opposite of what it has
assumed for the sake of initiating the argument.
The issue is further clouded by the circumstance
that the full context of the argument most likely
extends over several Dialogues, not all of which
survive, and the intended order of which remains
in question.
At other points Socrates appears to claim that knowledge and virtue are
neither learned nor taught, in the strictest senses of these words, but
can only be "divined", "recollected", or "remembered", that is, recalled,
recognized, or reconstituted from the original acquaintance that a soul,
being immortal, already has with the real idea or the essential form of
each thing in itself. Still, this leaves open the possibility that one
person can help another to guess a truth or to recall what both of them
already share in knowing, as if locked away in one or another partially
obscured or temporarily forgotten part of their inmost being. And it is
just this freer interpretation of "learning" and "teaching", whereby one
agent catalyzes not catechizes another, that a liberal imagination would
yet come to call "education". Therefore, the real issue at stake, both
with regard to the aim and as it comes down to the end of this inquiry,
is not so much whether knowledge and virtue can be learned and taught
as what kind of education is apt to achieve their actualization in the
individual and is fit to maintain their realization in the community.
How are these riddles from the origins of intellectual history, whether
one finds them far or near and whether one views it as bright or dim,
relevant to the present inquiry? There are a number of reasons why
I am paying such close attention to these ancient and apparently
distant concerns. The classical question as to what virtues are
teachable is resurrected in the modern question, material to the
present inquiry, as to what functions are computable, indeed,
most strikingly in regard to the formal structures that each
question engenders. Along with a related question about the
nature of the true philosopher, as one hopes to distinguish
it from the most sophisticated imitations, all of which is
echoed on the present scene in the guise of Turing's test
for a humane intelligence, this body of riddles inspires
the corpus of most work in AI, if not the cognitive and
the computer sciences at large.
Jon Awbrey
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