Category: (Un)Certainty

On Teleology: I. Efficiency

Featured Image Credit (edited) by William of Ockham – from a manuscipt of Ockham’s Summa Logicae, MS Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 464/571, fol. 69r}, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

On Teleology: I. Efficiency

Teleology is the study of final causes or, put another way, the fulfillment of inherent purpose or, even more simply, completion. As a quality or trait, we can call this τέλος, or telos.

An analogy I use in Teacher Ed to illustrate telos is shipbuilding… what kind of ‘ship’ – or maybe better in plural, what kinds of ‘ships’ – have school teachers been aiming to build? One warrant for this shipbuilding comparison, my thinking goes, is our culture’s hankering obsession with efficiency, i.e. what ocean-going vessel ever gets built except to fill some function or purpose?

By analogy, what function or purpose do teachers envisage or intend for K-12 graduates – what kind(s) of people do we want K-12 graduates to become? How closely does this resemble the kind(s) of people the Curriculum has in mind? And then, maybe more importantly, what kind(s) of people do teachers actually end up ‘building’? Alternatively, from the student perspective, what kinds of influence have teachers brought to bear upon their telos? What kinds of people finally cross that stage for their diploma?

No analogy being perfect – sort of the point with analogies – we can then make broader comparisons and contrasts between students and ships and gain a bit of insight about the intentions around which we approach the ‘building’ of each one.

Looks to be Grade 11 or 12ish
Image Credit by Manne1953 on Pixabay

But if ships don’t float your boat, try framing telos in the natural world… by analogy, imagine bacteria, forever on the hunt to feed and survive, yet to what end? Do bacteria literally just feed because they already live and will procreate, or do they need to survive in order to fulfill some further function or purpose?

Image Credits by Ali Shah Lakhani (edited) on Unsplash and
geralt on Pixabay

Likewise, consider the cells in our bodies. Controlled as they are by genes, proteins, and nuclei, each has a specific function that elicits some somatic or physiological consequence. By analogy, we might even stretch the description as far as saying cells seem to operate with some kind of ‘intention’ although that’s not to invoke ‘awareness’ or ‘sentience’… none as far as we know, anyway, not like the awareness a shipbuilder has while building ships or the intent a teacher has while teaching students.

Hmm… could telos be more inherent or instinctive than intentional, some mere effect of causes, which fall like dominos? Possibly, but for now let’s defer that question on the basis, as noted above, that our culture prefers to ply the Road of Efficiency, towards which ‘a purpose for everything’ definitely fills the bill. Of course, it’s no secret who else plies Efficiency Road – plies it like a wide-load truck – and it’s no outlander who believes that Science embraces teleology.

Along that Road, ‘a purpose for everything’ might also convey ‘nothing wasted’… think Occam’s Razor and a cut-to-the-chase sentiment that we might dare to call “relentless” although maybe let’s amend this to something kinder and gentler, like “persistent” – still sharp, just not so cutting.

Image Credit by Classroom Clipart

Hang on, though… let’s also clarify exactly which Occam’s Razor we’re using here because, you know, there’s Occam’s Razor and there’s Ockham’s Razor…

(i) Occam’s Razor

‘All things being equal,
the simplest explanation tends to be the correct explanation.’

and/or

“…permission to wrap up all epistemological loose ends
as ‘finished science’ in one fell swoop of fatal logic”

– posted on by The Ethical Skeptic

Occam’s Razor would keep matters simplistic by having us ignore or dismiss whichever details and data don’t suit some preferred belief or objective. In other words…

‘That which is easier to understand’

equals

‘That which is therefore more likely to be true’

equals

‘I’ll not be wasting my precious time with all that
thinking, testing, wondering crap’

equals

‘I don’t agree with you’
‘I don’t want to agree with you,
and, for that reason, you are wrong,
plus Occam’s Razor is Sciencey;
ipso facto, I am invincible’

(ii) Ockham’s Razor

“Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate”

equals

“Plurality should not be posited without necessity”

William of Ockham would have us avoid leaping to conclusions or posing explanations beyond what can be justified by careful reasoning, yet with exceptions for what is self-evident, what is known to experience, and what might be “… proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture.” [William of Ockham, you understand, was a devout pre-Protestant friar and scholar who, thereby, viewed God as the sole ontological necessity.] In other words…

Proffer something because reason can warrant or justify its addition

equals

Don’t let your ego write cheques that Science can’t cash

And how come? Because something straightforward is and ought to remain distinct from something simple just as something complex is and ought to remain distinct from something complicated.

The razor imagery, meanwhile, is metaphor for scraping away the ink you spilled from writing (or thinking) unnecessarily.

OK, let’s recap: Telos thus far = Ships, Cells, Bacteria, Science, and two kinds of Razors… up next – you guessed it: Acorns!

The Nuisance of Nuance: I. Pedantry

Here’s one I know:

Knowledge is personally constructed, socially mediated, and inherently situated.

I’ve quoted this before – it was coined years ago by my doctoral advisor and has remained a real foundational statement for him. More recently, I found another one, kind of similar:

… knowledge [is] always ‘situated’ – in other words, produced by and for particular interests, in particular circumstances, at particular times.

This one I found in a dissertation (p. 45, footnote 19), cited as MacLure (2013, p. 167).[1] I wanted more context, so I read the MacLure article, every word, and failed to find this quotation at all – plus the page numbers were off. This is not unusual – in the hustle-and-bustle of research writing, sources get mixed up, or even accidentally forgotten. Okay, so… a little more searching and – whaddya know – another dissertation (p. 137, footnote 71) with the same quotation, cited as MacLure (2013, p. 167). Now, this is a bit unusual – two dissertations, same year, half a world apart, citing the same page from the same source for a quotation that isn’t there. Search for yourself… or try this alternative MacLure link, which is open access. Who knows, must have been a recall or something… salmonella academia.

But once I got to thinking about the whole thing… it seemed almost too perfect: always ‘situated’ for particular interests, in particular circumstances, at particular times. Could it really be that this disembodied quotation had somehow actually found a way to live out its own truth? That’s what the kids say these days, isn’t it… live your own truth?

What could that mean… ‘live your own truth’ – I mean if it’s true. Well, for one thing, it could mean all knowledge is partial and prone to dispute, what you know and what I know simply being portions of what can be known. That’s nothing new, but now even the quote-unquote “same” knowledge must necessarily be air quotes ‘different’ knowledge. So, say you came to know ‘X’ just a split second before me, or say I came to know ‘X’ while standing just a step to your left… I know, it sounds silly but remember, so did disembodied quotation recall… anyway, this isn’t fantasy, it’s academics.

Test on Thursday…
Photo Credit (edited): Kaja Sariwating on Unsplash

Okay, so… let’s say I come to know ‘X’ while descending a flight of stairs, or while standing at the bottom. In each case – however painstaking the difference – I come to know ‘X’ in a way that I literally could not from the other perspective. Even one step above or one step below is not the ‘same’ step on a flight of stairs. Plus, upon any shift of ground, some time will pass – barely a split second from one spot to the next – and since nobody outside Star Trek can be in two places at one time, well… painstaking pedantry over space and time seems ridiculous, but remember… this ain’t SciFi, it’s academics.

Okay, so for example… take the difference between what you come to know and what I come to know.

Let’s say you and I witness some incident together… some movie, some moment, whatever.

And let’s suppose this occurs for each of us simultaneously because we’re standing side-by-side. Wouldn’t anyone just say we’re experiencing “the same thing”? By thing, of course, what they’d mean is an ambiguous pronoun that points at the event. Except for… thing can also point to the experiencing of the event, the distinction being that from either perspective, yours or mine, thing 1 points outward at the event, and thing 2 inward to the experiencing.

And who’s going for beers with someone this pedantic, he asked in a blog post. Anyway, if someone said we’re experiencing “the same thing,” even this would still depend on who said it and when they said it. By the way, if “Who cares?” actually bothered anyone, we wouldn’t even have pedantry. And since we’ve now found out how knowledge is always ‘situated’ for particular interests, in particular circumstances, at particular times, well… you might dare to imagine the situation that compels you to care… and now imagine all the kids wearing Get Pedantic t-shirts.

Okay… you and I experience the same “thing” together, but we each experience it exclusively: you as you, and I as me. As for differing upbringings, educations, biases… as far as coming to any consensus about this ‘same’ event, well… you and I haven’t actually experienced “the same thing” at all, have we? Experience, for want of a better word, must be owned: yours as yours, and mine as mine. And now someone will be disputing all this with something like, “Yeah, but knowledge and experience are different things!” to which I would reply, “You’re buying the first round.” By experience, how about five senses? No, in all fairness, if experience and knowledge were the same thing, we’d use the same word.

So, if knowledge really is situated, then neither you nor I can claim to have the same knowledge – not about that event, and not about anything, ever: at best, we’ll take each other at our word… one read-through of Hamlet should be all anyone needs to grasp this, and if that can’t put the whole ChatGPT fuss in perspective, I don’t know what can.

Okay, how about… you and I have “extremely similar” knowledge. Yeah, except for… if similarity reflects how closely we share background-and-belief, couldn’t it also reflect how closely we stood side-by-side? In fact, couldn’t it reflect both… or maybe that’s ‘either’ – or actually, ‘each’. Hmm…

On the trains, ‘side-by-side’ can even be ‘cheek by jowl’
Photo Credit (edited): Anna Dziukinska on Unsplash

And, of course, whether extremely similar or vastly different, neither your individual knowledge nor mine negates the event itself: something actually happened, and we were each there experiencing it. And neither your individual knowledge nor mine can preclude some fact from the event – not unless we simply didn’t detect it, or unless we simply deny it. But let’s not deny how partially we understand the things that we do detect since – knowledge being situated, and all – we can simply preclude Fact ‘X’ with Alternative Fact ‘Y’. It is, after all, my knowledge. Isn’t it.

Now, I will say… for me, what “alternative facts” means is some people interpret the same thing differently from other people, which is really a short summation of this entire post. But rather than make academic claims when someone declares my fantasy vastly removed from their reality, I prefer to accept that (a) not everybody agrees on everything, and (b) the idiocy to motivate a couched phrase like ‘alternative facts’ doesn’t change what got experienced; it only describes someone’s interpretation of that experience.

Here’s one thing I know: when a tree falls down, that tree is down, and no amount of fantasy will be standing it back up again.

Click here for Part II. Belief

[1] Maggie MacLure is an Education professor in Manchester, UK.

One Thing, I Guess, is Certain

Featured Image Credit: “Court of Exchequer, Westminster Hall” in the Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Death and taxes have held court since what seems like forever, maybe because people just come to accept as guaranteed whatever’s managed to sit long enough upon the throne.

You wonder, though… nothing lasts forever, so they say.

Wow, so they would doubt the guarantee of death? I guess I’m saying not everyone agrees that death is final, and where this is predominantly a question of spirituality, faith has long managed to dwell in willing hearts and minds, come what may – that includes scorn, imprisonment, and execution. “Better heat now than later,” might be faith’s reply, and where there’s smoke, I guess there’s fire.

As for taxes guaranteed, well… until recently, these were easier to defend if only because the governments that collect them need their own currency to cancel their debts. In fact, the very creation of authorized currency, more and more year after year, is a self-sustaining need to collect taxes in perpetuity. I guess you could say money really does make the world go round.

Still, though… that authority to create currency, like when it’s super–desperately necessary, that could be extrapolated to conclude that taxes are unnecessary: why tax when currency could simply be authorized year after year to pay what’s needed? I guess the key word in this question is “enough,” which I guess I left out of this question, so I’m gonna need you to go ahead and draw your own conclusions about decision and consequence. As for me, I’m drawn back to the earlier phrase about which one’s the better heat.

If there’s a common theme underway in this brief meditation, I guess some might call it vision, others might call it ambition, and still others might call it imprudence. I will call it hubris and, in the same desultory breath, try to lift your spirits by drawing attention to Russell Napier’s latest exhibit in the Library of Mistakes, a place where the shelves groan with volumes of dalliance – that much, at least, is certain.