Communal Philosophical Inquiry and the Paradox of Criticality: Democratic Vistas

• In Event: The Role of Philosophy in Elementary and Secondary Education

Abstract

Abstract
In this presentation, I argue for the unique opportunity that communal philosophical inquiry (CPI) offers to promote the critical behavior required for democratic agency. Central to this argument is a proposed resolution to what I term the “paradox of criticality,” which describes the logical conflict between criticality’s conceptual demand to iteratively interrogate claims and the practical and theoretical need to put an a-critical end to any such interrogation. I propose that, in providing a space for participants to engage in iterative interrogation unconstrained by disciplinary epistemology and method, CPI presents the possibility of critically rejecting as senseless the possibility of additional interrogation. As such, CPI presents a mode of critical interrogation that does not demand an a-critical end.

Objectives
I seek to outline a conception of critical disposition that suggests the unique opportunity that communal philosophical inquiry offers students to engage in and develop the critical behavior required for democratic agency.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
The presentation draws on three main theories. I utilize Hubert Dreyfus’s (Dreyfus 2002, 2008, 2014) phenomenological theory of expertise to develop an expertise conception of critical disposition, which I further ground in contemporary brain science, specifically global workspace theory (Shanahan & Baars, 2005; Baars & Franklin, 2007; Dehaene, 2014). Finally, I invoke the later Wittgenstein’s distinction between knowledge and certainty (Wittgenstein, 1969) to make clear the possibility of developing critical disposition that avoids the conceptual dilemma presented by the paradox of criticality.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
In this presentation, I present a philosophical argument centered on an analysis of critical disposition that aligns with the phenomenology of expertise and contemporary neurocognitive theory.
Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
As mentioned, the argument relies on three main sources – Dreyfus’s expertise theory, global workspace theory, as described by Baars and Franklin (2007), Shanahan & Baars (2005), and Dehaene (2014), and the later Wittgenstein (1969).
Conclusions and scholarly significance of the study or work
The argument I present suggests the unique value to democratic education of engaging in communal philosophical inquiry. While other proponents of democratic education (e.g. Gutman, 1987; Lipman, 2003; Nussbaum, 2010) have linked CPI to democratic agency through its ability to promote critical behavior, this argument is perhaps unique in that it relies a conception of critically interrogative disposition that takes account of both the phenomenology of critical questioning and contemporary neurocognitive theory. Further, the argument addresses an issue with the concept of the critical disposition that I believe has been overlooked in the literature on the subject.

Author

• Daniel Fisherman, Montclair State University