[lit-ideas] Re: What, then, is wanting to know?

  • From: Walter Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 11:36:51 -0330 (NST)

Just want to clarify that my commentary on John's questions assumed the
accuracy of the positions attributed to A and N respectively. I make no
comment on the validity of these attributions at all.

Only a suicidal Education student would ask the prof teaching a required
(or elective) course in philosophy and education such a question. It's a
sure mark of a failure in professional accountability and a lack of
respect for one's own personal well-being. (The latter are not
themselves needs, wants or desires - or any other kind of heteronomous
motive.)

In the spirit of Liberal Education across personal values and cultural
difference,

Walter O.
Memorial U
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On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Robert Paul wrote:

> I wrote
>
> >> Why do you want to know things, in general? is a strange question. Why
> >> do you want to know how to change a light bulb, or what the
> >> conjugation of 'savoir' [is] won't ordinarily be puzzling. Why do you want
> >> to know anything at all? seems hopeless.
>
> John wrote
>
> > It's a strange question, but not a bad one.  I take on board Professor
> > Paul's comment that the answer will often be specific. When knowledge
> > has an instrumental value, failure to know may imply the inability to
> > perform the task at hand. And Walter is right that, logically
> > speaking, the answers suggested have nothing to do with the epistemic
> > quality of knowledge.
>
> Next come the hedgehog and the fox, I suppose, along with those who
> are neither but seem related to one or the other; one whose specialty
> is a rare butterfly species; a would-be jeopardy contestant. Perhaps
> more interesting is the autistic mathematical savant, Daniel Tammet,
> who recently recited the values of Pi to the 22,514th place from
> memory; who knows seven natural languages and has 'invented' a language
> of his own. In reading about him one has the sense that he somehow cannot
> help knowing things (all the while delighting in what he knows).
>
> 'Tammet is softly spoken, and shy about making eye contact, which makes him
> seem younger than he is. He lives on the Kent coast, but never goes
> near the beach--there are too many pebbles to count. The thought of a
> mathematical problem with no solution makes him feel uncomfortable.
> Trips to the supermarket are always a chore. "There's too much mental
> stimulus. I have to look at every shape and texture. Every price, and
> every arrangement of fruit and vegetables. So instead of
> thinking,'What cheese do I want this week?', I'm just really
> uncomfortable."
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html
>
> It may be that Hammett is Super Fox, in that he needs to know
> everything (and hence very many things). But I've intentionally
> digressed.
>
> I said that 'Why do you want to know things in general?' was a strange
> question. John replied that it was not a bad one. No, it isn't; except
> that I have really no idea what would count as an answer to it. Beyond
> knowing things that are of practical importance, why should I want to
> know anything at all? Alas, I just do, in that I find these things
> (Hume's thoughts on the uniformity of nature; why many French words
> have a circumflex over their first vowel) interesting. 'Interesting'!
> 'What kind of a deep answer is that?!!' For thousands of years people
> who have wanted to inquire into things 'of no practical importance'
> have been ridiculed for that very thing. And, having noted this, I'm
> no further along in answering this strange question.
>
> > They may yet have some pedagogical value [says John]. How does one
> > answer a student who asks, "Why do I have to know that?"  Or a
> > legislator or
> > funding agency that asks, "Why should this be taught or researched?"
>
> Luckily, I've never ever had a student ask that, and I don't deal with
> legislatures or funding agencies. Could I though honestly say to the
> sceptical student that knowing it will make her somehow a better
> person? I'd hesitate to; yet this answer is as justified as the
> scepticism behind the question. As for legislatures, the growing
> demand that schools speak of their students as 'consumers' and testify
> as to what having taken such and such a course in such and such a
> department will yield by way of quantifiable 'results,' is spreading.
> It is pernicious and silly but it is spreading, nonetheless.
>
> In the end, all knowledge is either knowledge of..., or knowledge
> that..., although these are shifty categories. So, I cannot 'just
> know' (without knowing something) any more than I can just 'create'
> without making something, no matter how insignificant. The 'strange
> question' is strange for just that reason: it appears to assume that
> there is something like 'just knowing.' I'm sure I haven't understood
> it.
>
> Finally: the trouble with commentators on Foucault who look to
> Aristotle for support is that too often theirs is a fictional Aristotle.
>
> Robert Paul
> The Reed Institute
>
>
>
>
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