Education and philosophy in R. F. Holland’s Against Empiricism: A reassessment

Abstract

In his 1980 book Against Empiricism: On Education, Epistemology and Value, British philosopher R. F. Holland (1923–2013) exposes the inadequacies of a philosophy of education originating from an empiricist worldview. By following Plato’s view that the issue of what qualifies as knowledge has to be understood with reference to whether it is teachable, Holland’s critique of empiricism highlights the social and communal dimensions of education. The primary objective of this paper is to offer a reassessment of Holland’s thoughts on education and value. To do so, I first discuss Holland’s use of Plato’s ideas in his article ‘Epistemology and Education’ to demonstrate that Holland’s position can offer us a fruitful way to diagnose common, prevalent educational practices. I then turn to look at Holland’s views on value and morality. To illustrate how his thoughts on education can be seen to be relevant to the contemporary world, I explore and criticize some implicit presuppositions on knowledge in the 2011 box-office hit Limitless. The conceptual dimension of Holland’s take on education is then examined alongside with some recent trends in epistemology and philosophy of education.

Keywords:

• R. F. Holland
• Plato
• Wittgenstein
• epistemology
• knowledge
• Limitless

Acknowledgement

The first version of this paper was presented at a seminar for graduate students at Seoul National University in 2015. I would like to thank Duck-joo Kwak for giving me the opportunity to speak there. It has also benefited from the comments from the audience at a Hong Kong Philosophy Café meeting in 2015, the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia 2016 Conference and the 2017 Liberal Education Conference at Mount Royal University. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude towards the anonymous reviewers of this article.

Notes

1. An anonymous commentator of this article has noted that Wittgenstein’s use of tennis to illustrate the distinction between relative and absolute judgements is potentially misleading. If tennis can be seen as an activity that can bring about physical well-being and social status, then it would not seem ‘all right’ to play it badly. For Wittgenstein’s example of tennis to work, it seems necessary to see it purely as a game or a form of entertainment which has no practical utility whatsoever. For further discussion of Wittgenstein’s ethical thought, see Tilghman, 1991.

2. Holland seems to have a relatively restrictive understanding of skills, which he takes to be the ability to perform a particular task. From this perspective, the possession of skills is compatible with a lack of theoretical understanding. A further implication of this stance on skills is that the Greek term tekhnē, which has variously been translated as ‘skill’, ‘art’, ‘craft’ or ‘knowledge’, should have a meaning closer to ‘knowledge’ to Holland. On the term tekhnē, see Woodruff, 1983.

3. The expression is from the memoir Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam, quoted by Holland.

4. It is worthwhile to point out that both Holland and his pupil Raimond Gaita engage this question. While Holland argues that the notion of mastery can be used to understand value in education, Gaita responds to the dispute by reconceptualizing the issue in a radical way. Having come to the conclusion that matters regarding meaning and values are outside the domain of the empirical world, Gaita resorts to a different critical vocabulary which does not center on empirical ‘facts’ and truths understood as correspondence. Instead, Gaita argues that notions such as the sentimental, moral seriousness, remorse, the counterfeit and what amounts to a parody or caricature are important in making sense of the meaning of morality in human life (Gaita, 2000, 2002, 2004). Here Holland’s and Gaita’s approaches are consistent with Holland’s understanding of Plato: the problem is addressed not by the use of new ‘facts’ or ‘skills’, but by the introduction of a profounder conception.

5. Given the fact that skepticism is considered a main question in epistemology, philosophers who make attempts to resist skepticism are under the burden to establish secure, paradigmatic instances of knowledge. Due to the fact that knowledge-claims and value-claims in the domain of morality, religion, art, and esthetics are widely known to be contestable and contested, paradigmatic cases of knowledge are expected to be sought elsewhere. While the philosophical search for foundational knowledge may go on within the academic circle, the influence of philosophical skepticism toward value-claims seems to have reached the wider public for some time. Scientific ‘fact’ and propositions in mathematics (and logic), in contrast to ethical, religious, or esthetic values, are often deemed to be ‘objective’ and therefore not subject to dispute. They are therefore often assumed to be indisputable instances of knowledge. That science and mathematics enjoy higher epistemic status in our culture is further strengthened by the way science and mathematics are taught in schools (Winch & Gingell, 1999; pp. 82–84). Instead of being exposed to the view that scientific ‘facts’ are ultimately contingent claims about the empirical world, students are often taught to equate ‘facts’ with truths. Although philosophers of science have repeatedly pointed out that science has been an evolving discipline throughout human history, there seems to be a constant gap between what philosophers of science are saying and how the general public are being taught. Evidence for this is found in the fact that the historical observation that science has undergone numerous ‘paradigm shifts’ is rarely introduced in the school contexts. Practicing scientists are rarely introduced to the history of science and only a minority of them are aware of the metaphysical assumption underlying their own practice (Williams, 2015). Under this climate, science is taught in an ahistorical manner and the impression that knowledge acquisition can take place individually is further reinforced. This means that the social dimension of science, where power and human interests infiltrate the practice of scientists, is not given due recognition. Popular presentation of scientists such as Newton and Einstein as geniuses capable of making groundbreaking discoveries on their own also leaves little room for the teacher and other social actors in the process of discovery (Barthes, 2000, pp. 68–70). To sum up, the kind of empiricism criticized by Holland seems to be alive and well in the contemporary education scene. At this juncture, it is useful to refer to another phenomenon which is relevant to our present discussion. Although one might say that scientism enjoys virtual orthodox status in our contemporary culture, it is not an easily defined phenomenon. Nevertheless, one may identify a few main features of it: (1) scientific knowledge is seen as the only source or form of knowledge; (2) reality can be exhaustively studied by the methods of the natural sciences and (3) it endorses the view that all human problems can be solved by scientific advances in the future (this amounts to reducing all problems to technical problems). The exact relationship between scientism and empiricism will not be discussed here. For the purpose of this article, it suffices to say that scientism embodies many assumptions from an empiricist metaphysics to the exclusion of other rival worldviews (Robinson, 2015). A scientistic person (who may or may not be a scientist) would therefore make claims such as ‘Love is a kind of chemical reaction in the brain’ or ‘God does not exist because there is no scientific evidence in support of it’.

6. One could dispute my claim that Eddie does not teach other characters by pointing out that the film contains scenes where Eddie seems to be offering some sort of justifications or explanations to his knowledge-claims in front of his peers. In response I would emphasize the fact that in ‘teaching’ other people, Eddie never (except in his confession to Lindy) mentions the crucial fact he has taken NZT and that his superhuman abilities come with the drug. From this perspective, the verbal accounts he gives to other characters in the film seem to amount to nothing more than rationalizations: they are in effect post hoc constructions given to others in order to make him look more respectable. If Eddie does possess ‘knowledge’ in these situations, his ‘knowledge’ is acquired through a means which is unavailable to anyone without NZT. This may explain why others cannot replicate Eddie’s apparent success at the stock market. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this significant issue.

7. In the ‘Introduction’ to the classic work History of Art, H. W. Janson and Anthony F. Janson write: ‘The creation of a work of art has little in common with what we usually mean by “making.” It is a strange and risky business in which the makers never quite know what they are making until they have actually made it. […] For the non-artist, it is hard to believe that this uncertainty, this need to take a chance, is the essence of the artist’s work. Whereas artisans generally attempt what they know to be possible, artists are driven to attempt the impossible—or at least the improbable or seemingly unimaginable. What defines art, then, is not any difference in materials or techniques from the applied arts. Rather, art is defined by the artist’s willingness to take risks in the quest for bold, new ideas. […] What sets great artists apart from other is not simply the desire to seek but the mysterious ability to find’ (Janson and Janson (2001), History of Art, Sixth Edition, London: Thames & Hudson, pp.18–19).

8. Cf. Illich, 1971, p. 76: ‘Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.’ See also Unwin & Yandell, 2016 and Biesta, 2010, pp. 10–27.

9. For a classic work on the relationship between education, ideology and the curriculum, see Apple (2004).

10. One might compare Holland’s emphasis on the social and communal with what is known as social epistemology and virtue epistemology. See Goldman & McGrath, 2015; see also Kotzee, 2013.

11. Regarding the nature of first-person claims about sensations such as pain, see the works of P. M. S. Hacker.