In Mind and World, John McDowell concludes that human beings and, principally by their initiation into language. Such of human development typically represent first-language learning as a movement from a non-rationally secured conformity with correct practice, through increasing understanding, to a state of rational mastery of correct practice. Accordingly, they tend to invoke something like Wittgenstein's concept of training to explain the first stage of this process. This essay considers the cogency of this view of learning and development. I agree (...) with Sebastian Rdl believes. I conclude by considering the relevance of McDowell's view of second nature to two striking ideas: Ian Hacking's suggestion that the development of autistic children is and Derek Parfit's claim that persons are not human beings. (shrink)

Wittgenstein constantly invokes teaching, training and learning in his later work. It is therefore interesting to consider what role these notions play for him there. I argue that their use is central to Wittgenstein’s attempt to refute cognitivist assumptions, and to show how normative practices can be understood without the threat of circularity, grounded not in a kind of seeing, but in doing, and the natural reactions of an organism. This can generate a worry that Wittgenstein’s position is quietist and (...) anti-critical: critique, as a challenge to the taken-for-granted grammar of our language game, is technically meaningless. I argue that Wittgenstein does not rule out critique. His own practice demonstrates that critique is possible, but takes place within a language game, and its status as critique is always subject to challenge in the agora of a discourse. (shrink)

I hope to clarify and explicate an account of how a creature comes to be brought into the space of reasons – that is, comes to take its place as a rational agent in social practices. My ultimate interest, however, is with a tension apparently generated by the emphasis on training coupled with this attack on cognitivism. If one’s coming to maturity depends on one being embedded in a practice, so that one comes to adopt, with ‘comfortable certainty’, the common (...) ground of that practice’s language games, then there seems to be no position from which to frame a critique of a practice. (shrink)

Both Wittgenstein and Dewey have a role for the concept of skills and techniques in their understanding of practices and thereby the possession of concepts. Skills are typically acquired through training. It can seem, however, that their respective appeals to practice are dissimilar: Dewey’s appeal is, like Peirce’s, programmatic. It is meant to do philosophical work. In contrast, for Wittgenstein, the appeal to practice can seem a primitive, something that is meant to put an end to philosophical work. I argue (...) that Wittgenstein’s appeal to practice is much closer to Dewey’s. The argument arises out of difficulties with Wittgenstein’s concept of training. Wittgenstein’s concept of training is inadequate for bridging the trajectory from initial training to the acquisition of skills that are second nature. The latter seems required for his appeal to practice and the way that grasp of concepts is embedded our practices of going on. The inadequacy of Wittgenstein’s concept of training renders the idea of such a trajectory incoherent, for it manifests a real dilemma about how to understand the transition from rote repetitive training to mastery of skillful activity. I show how we can make sense of the role that training plays in developing skillful activity and how by repetitive training we acquire new skills. The solution to the dilemma comes from acknowledging a point that Wittgenstein shares with Dewey concerning the role of selective attention. By acknowledging the role that attention plays in extending the operation of skills, we can make sense of the acquisition of new skills and provide a granularity to the concept of practice that makes Wittgenstein’s appeal to practice more akin to Dewey’s: a programmatic concept rather than a primitive. Practice is, for Wittgenstein, something to be studied and described in a detail that does explanatory work. Furthermore, the account has a number of points of contact with Dewey. (shrink)

In this paper I take up Peters' invitation to think of education in terms of initiation. I argue that the concept of initiation demands much closer scrutiny and analysis in order to provide a substantive thesis about education. A key challenge concerns how we conceive of the initiate. The very idea of initiation suggests that, in some interesting sense, the pupil qua initiate joins in learning activities; their role is more than that of passive recipient of values and belief. But (...) it is a substantive challenge to give a principled account of the trajectory from initiate to full member of a learning community. It requires that we take seriously the question: ‘How can a pupil be engaged in something that they do not yet understand?’. This can be taken as an abstract philosophical question—a ‘How possible’ question closely connected to the paradox of learning—and also as an empirical question about the preferred specifics of a pedagogy for engaging learners. I sketch options for answering the first and review how my preferred option segues into the details of an answer to the latter. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the prospects of a Neo-Aristotelian position—according to which the difference between the human species and non-human animals is a difference in ‘form’—in the context of the question of how the human form of life is related to the idea of education. Two interpretations of this idea have been suggested by contemporary Neo-Aristotelian philosophy that offer contrasting accounts of the role played by education. According to the first, the idea of a formal difference goes with a (...) notion of potentiality, according to which the distinctiveness of the human is mainly a product of education, and hence a matter of second nature. According to the second, the idea of the human is the idea of a formally distinctive kind of first nature that explains the very possibility of education. I maintain that both interpretations do justice to an important aspect of human life yet fail fully to grasp the significance of the notion of ‘form’ that they employ. I argue that to embrace the insight that the difference of the human is a difference in ‘form’, we must think of the human as a form of life whose very concept contains the concept of education. The concept of education, I argue, is a logical concept, contained in the concept of life that it describes. (shrink)

This essay aims to develop the so-called ‘transformational view’ of human development (advocated by McDowell and Bakhurst) by advancing a play-based model of learning. I first consider challenges to this view posed by Luntley and Rödl who argue that the learning encounter must presuppose some rational faculty already present in the prelinguistic child. Rödl in particular considers joint attentional episodes in which child and adult attend to objects in their environment together as signifying a uniquely rational consciousness active in the (...) human child. I however argue on phenomenological grounds that this intellectualist treatment is implausible and unconvincing. I propose a play-centered treatment (inspired primarily from Huizinga) that is more sensitive to the life of the child. This perspective of play I maintain scaffolds a shared normative space which enables self-conscious, responsive, and intelligible thought and action. This account motivates what I call a participatory play model of learning which is constitutively non-intellectual but is nonetheless intelligent. It is non-intellectual because it emphasizes building co-reactive relationships and participation in shared cultural practices. But it is also intelligent because it makes possible a distinctively human mode of understanding grounded on an interactive, relational, and imaginatively reflexive engagement with the world. (shrink)

On the point that, in practices of critical thinking, we respond spontaneously in concrete situations, this paper presents an account on behalf of Wittgenstein. I argue that the ‘seeing-things-aright’ model of Luntley's Wittgenstein is not adequate, since it pays insufficient attention to radically new circumstances, in which the content of norms is updated. While endorsing Bailin's emphasis on criteria of critical thinking, Wittgenstein would agree with Papastephanou and Angeli's demand to look behind criteriology. He maintains the primacy of the practical, (...) and yet contends that a reasonable person lets rules of rationality compel her. These rules are not mere heuristics. I further examine Burbules' conception of communicative reason, and, among others, his interpretation of Wittgenstein's sign-post example. (shrink)

As a landmark philosopher of language and of mind, Ludwig Wittgenstein is also remarkable for having crossed, with apparent ease, the ‘continental divide’ in philosophy. It is consequently not surprising that Wittgenstein’s work, particularly in the Philosophical Investigations, has been taken up by philosophers of education in English. Michael A. Peters, Christopher Winch, Paul Smeyers and Nicholas Burbules, and others have engaged extensively with the implications of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy for education. One challenge they face is Wittgenstein’s use of (...) the word ‘training.’ It appears throughout his discussions of language learning and in his periodic references to education. This is made all the more problematic by realizing that the German term Wittgenstein uses consistently is Abrichtung, which refers to animal dressage or obedience training, which is currently used in sadomasochistic practice, and which also connotes also the breaking of an animal’s will. I argue that this little-recognized fact has broad significance for many important Wittgenstinian insights into education. I conclude by considering how an unflinching recognition of the implications of Wittgenstein’s word choice might cast him as a pessimistic or tragic philosopher of education and upbringing—following German-language traditions—rather than as thinker more compatible with progressive Anglo-American perspectives. (shrink)

Augustine’s autobiographical Confessions contains one of the first accounts of a child learning to speak. This account, in turn, is central to Klaus Mollenhauer’s Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing, a book internationally regarded as one of the most important German contributions to philosophy of education and curriculum theory in the 20th century. This book’s interpretation of Augustine’s description, as well as its divergence from an earlier interpretation by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations form the initial focus of this paper, (...) which undertakes close readings of both approaches to Augustine. We argue that Wittgenstein’s account, while quite similar to that of Mollenhauer, arrives at an impasse, particularly insofar as training, education and upbringing is concerned. In his subsequent attempt to “rescue” Augustine from Wittgenstein’s critique, Mollenhauer develops three highly original notions that are central to his own understanding of upbringing: presentation, representation and Bildsamkeit. Significantly, the divergence of Mollenhauer’s and Wittgenstein’s interpretations also throws into sharp relief Mollenhauer’s particular, dialogical and pedagogical interpretation of “the call,” as it is originally articulated in Augustine. (shrink)