Should Anti-Realists Teach Critical Thinking?

Donald L. Hatcher

A couple of years ago, in an article titled "Epistemology and Pedagogy,"(1) I pointed out that in the history of philosophy there has been an obvious relationship between some thinkers' favored epistemologies and their prescribed educational practices. In some cases, a thinker's epistemology seemed to lead to a favored way of teaching. For example, Plato's epistemology led to his preferred method of teaching: dialectics. Because he believed there were First Principles (Forms) proper to each discipline and the goal of education was for students to gain an understanding of these principles, the proper method of instruction was dialectical inquiry. Neither lectures nor demonstrations helped students acquire the art of inquiry, as both assume knowledge of what is sought: the first principles of a discipline.

In other cases, a thinker's educational experience seemed to determine his or her epistemology. Descartes' educational experiences, for example, left him with the problem of confronting and evaluating a smorgasbord of competing claims and values. Because of huge disagreements among his teachers (the experts), he was determined to find a method that enabled him to sort out what was worthy of belief and what was not. From this educational experience, we get Descartes' method involving systematic doubt, careful analysis of a question into its simplest parts, direct insight into the truth of ideas made "clear and distinct," deductive inference from these basic ideas, and continued repetition to check for reliability.

For Plato, epistemology drove his philosophy of education; for Descartes, his educational experiences informed the sort of epistemology with which he ended. So, at least in these instances, the history of philosophy shows a relationship between a thinker's favored epistemology and his or her views on education, especially pedagogy. That's about all one can say.

Some more contemporary thinkers have put forth a much more singular view, i.e., that one's chosen epistemology determines (or should determine) one's pedagogy: both how one teaches and the goals of education. Grant Cornwall, for example, claims that from "What one believes about knowledge, certain things follow about the nature and aims of education."(2) He claims that if one adopts the postmodern, anti-realist epistemology, then a teacher must not lecture, but rather help students "to create interpretations and configurations that are productive for certain purposes."(3) Teachers committed to postmodern epistemology, with its anti-realist bent, are opposed to lecturing because, according to Cornwall, such a practice assumes that there are objective facts students need to know and that the teacher is in a position to impart these facts. If one's favored epistemology claims there are no such facts, then why lecture? What would we tell students? For Cornwall at least, realists lecture, while postmodern anti-realists facilitate students in coming up with alternative interpretations and configurations to solve human problems.

My concerns in "Epistemology and Pedagogy" were two-fold. First I wanted to show that this claim about realist pedagogy was false. That is, one could be a realist, as were Plato and Descartes, and not think that the proper mode of instruction was to impart facts through lectures or any other method. There were obvious counter-examples. A realist of Socratic humility might focus instruction on a proper method of inquiry, as Socrates does in the Meno. Like Socrates, it is possible to believe in objective facts and in the mind's ability to grasp them, but not to believe one's current beliefs correspond with the way the world really is. People might maintain it reasonable to believe some of their beliefs are true, but plead uncertainty with respect to the majority of their claims. Hence, rather than lecturing, a realist with a fallibilist twist might focus on teaching students how to be effective inquirers. After all, if we believe that some claims are true and others false, one thing we really would like to accomplish in education is, as Descartes saw, to provide students with tools to distinguish between the two and to recognize when evidence and arguments are less than compelling.

The point is that if one is a realist, there is no clear relationship between one's epistemology and one's educational practices. If one is a realist in respect to truth, one (but not the only) aim of education is to help students become more able inquirers. One might also believe there are some well-established beliefs and arguments worth passing on to students and do a bit of lecturing now and then.

My second concern was to show that if one adopts the anti-realist epistemology, the very notion of teaching either facts or methods of inquiry becomes problematic. (Hence, this paper's title.) It seems that in practice, postmodern anti-realists imply a realist epistemology, otherwise they must withhold all judgment. Whenever postmoderns emphasize teaching students judgment with respect to the reasonableness of various interpretations, such judgment, if it is to be justified, requires an appeal to objective standards of reasonableness. For example, if, as Cornwall says, postmoderns want students to figure "out what to believe and value," that is, to be autonomous thinkers who are able to rise above the sociocentric forces of their culture, then postmoderns must assume at least the possibility of objective truths and values. To deny the existence of objective truth entails that, of the various interpretations or theories about how things are, no interpretation in any group of inquirers, discipline, or culture can be better or worse in any objective sense than any other. To deny the very possibility of objective values, as Cornwall does, makes it difficult for him to say it is "better" to be autonomous rather than passive indoctrinated persons who cannot think critically about the values and beliefs of their specific time and culture. When people make the judgment that it is "better" to adopt postmodern anti-realist epistemology than to adopt the realists' position, then, ironically, they endorse realism with its notion of objective truth and values. That is, when anti-realists say it is better or more reasonable to adopt an anti-realist epistemology, as opposed to some version of realism or fallibilism, they imply the existence of the very standards they deny.

While these conclusions seemed quite reasonable to me, Robert Sutton was not so sanguine. In his article "The Right Method?,"(4) Sutton claims that I fail to explicate the relationship between a thinker's favored epistemology and educational practice. Here, he may be right, given that I don't see any clear relation. Realists might be dialecticians, or they might lecture. Anti-realists, if they were consistent, could do anything whatsoever given that no position has any more epistemic merit than any other.

Sutton also claims that I mistakenly hold that

The telos of the educative process is the creation of autonomous rational agents capable of discovering objective facts and able to objectively and critically analyze competing interpretations of the facts. Hatcher criticizes anti-realistic epistemology arguing that it is an unsuitable basis for this pedagogical goal. His criticisms of postmodernity vis-a-vis education and his recommendations for his favored epistemology fail in the face of the complex realities surrounding the Western University and his position is regressive on at least three fronts. These are: [sic)] 1)his view of pedagogical aims, 2) his discussion of postmodernity's inherently contradictory nature, and 3) his understanding of epistemology within contemporary philosophical and educational theory discussions. (RM, 13)

Because the relationship between anti-realism and critical thinking is so important, i.e., I doubt whether an anti-realist can be an effective teacher of critical thinking, I would like to respond briefly to Sutton's criticisms. First, according to Sutton, I misunderstand the ends of education. "Part of the simplistic element of Hatcher's article is the way in which he conceives of education as being directed toward the single goal of creating autonomous rational agents." (RM, 13). He points out, rightly, that this "has never been the exclusive aim of higher education." (RM, 13) Such criticisms are puzzling, given that nowhere did I claim that creating autonomous rational agents was the sole end of education. In explaining the realist epistemology, I claim "at least one purpose of education is to help students discover the truth about... things," e.g., whether or not the earth orbits the sun or visa versa (EP, 14). In arguing against the postmodern pedagogy of Grant Cornwall, I quote him saying, "Thus the primary goal of higher education is not about transmitting or discovering truth, but about fostering intellectual autonomy."(5) I then point out by way of criticism that "It would be hard to deny that this sort of intellectual autonomy and judgment were not primary goals of education. We should ask, however, whether such autonomy and the critical judgment necessary to figure out what to believe and value are possible if one adopts an anti-realist epistemology."(6) I argued and continue to argue that they are not.

Second, what are the educational problems with the teachers holding the postmodern anti-realist position? What's wrong with telling students that the truth is not discovered but created? What's wrong with denying the very possibility of obtaining objective knowledge?

While there are many philosophical arguments against the sort of anti-realist or epistemological relativist position that the postmoderns hold up as the truth,(7) my efforts throughout EP were more focused on the practical consequences of anti-realism if taught as "the way things are." If, as Cornwall claims, postmodern thinkers want to replace students' ethnocentric mentality with intellectual autonomy and judgment, they need to include at least the possibility of inquirers attaining objective knowledge.(8) Otherwise, if one idea is no more "objectively true" than another, it seems we would just be replacing one ethnocentric set of ideas and values with another. Indeed, intellectual autonomy is one of the primary aims of education because without intellectual autonomy and its complement, reasoned judgment with respect to alternative theories about the world, education will decline into (or remain) mere indoctrination or ideological bamboozlement-the very thing postmoderns claim they oppose.

Imagine, for example, a class of students bereft of the critical thinking skills necessary for intellectual autonomy being taught by their philosophy teacher that "Truth ... is a relative term, a contextually/historically defined word, unrelated to objective facts. In other words, the truthfulness of our descriptions is determined by disciplinary specific rules...(RM, 14)." Void of critical thinking skills and dispositions, students might blindly accept these important and controversial claims without scrutiny, investigation, and judgment, without questioning their reasonableness. The students might go off thinking that it was "true" that claims (including those about the relativity of knowledge) were true or false depending on which discipline made the claim. As a result, if a history professor claims that Jefferson wrote the "Declaration of Independence," students might think this claim was true only for historians (maybe only some historians sharing certain methodological assumptions), but not true for art or philosophy professors. As a result, void of any meta-disciplinary standards for evidence and judgment, students could end up being asked to believe an assertion, e.g., "There is an external world with certain objective properties," in one class, perhaps chemistry, and its denial in another, perhaps Robert Sutton's philosophy class.

To me all of this seems very strange, educationally destructive, and psychologically impossible. Surely it is difficult to believe, consciously, at the same time, both an assertion and its denial, where the only difference is the discipline of the person who says it. Our minds do not seem to be wired that way.

Imagine though the response of students whose educations emphasized critical thinking and reasoned judgment. They might have wondered at the philosophy professor's claim about the truth being "a relative term" with "the truthfulness of our descriptions (being) determined by disciplinary specific rules." They might have pointed out to the professor that, indeed, if the truth were relative to each discipline, why should they accept the claims about truth made by someone in philosophy rather than some other. They might ask the philosophy professor "What are we supposed to do when someone within a discipline, such as Socrates and Descartes, claims that truth is not relative to each discipline?" They might ask "How do we decide what counts for a discipline?" If the rules for determining the truth of a claim are discipline-specific, it is very important that we understand what sorts of properties are sufficient to constitute a discipline. Otherwise, any claims made by any group will turn out to be "true," with each group having its own rules for determining the truth.

If there are no meta-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary rules for deciding the rationality of a claim, how will we know how to identify "legitimate disciplines," as opposed to illegitimate ones? If we cannot identify a legitimate discipline, then couldn't the claims of just anyone be equally as rational as anyone else's? After all, why does one have to be in a culturally recognized discipline to have a claim to truth? Why aren't the claims made by the proverbial "village idiot" just as reasonable as those of a philosophy professor? Hence, to my mind at least, accepting the claim that the truth or reasonableness of a claim is relative to each discipline ultimately trivializes all claims. It short-circuits the educational enterprise with regard to inquiry and research.

Unfortunately, most undergraduates, even if they have had training in critical thinking, are usually not so rhetorical. But occasionally, if they are equipped with the tools of critical judgment, some of the better students who read the anti-realist literature ask what evidence the writer has for the claim that "the truthfulness of our description is determined by disciplinary-specific rules." The problem for anyone who would answer the question about evidence is either the evidence for the position is discipline-specific and hence carries no weight for realists, non-relativists, and other skeptics, or the evidence is considered objective evidence that will convince any honest inquirer of its reasonableness. But, if the evidence is objectively valid across the disciplines, then the philosopher's claim about truth being discipline-specific is false.(9) At least some claims-those supporting relativism-are considered objective.

One can only imagine the bewilderment of the students in a postmodern relativist's Introduction to Philosophy class. They start out, as Sutton describes his own class, with the study of some Socratic dialogue, where Socrates points out over and over that judgment requires standards and that some judgments about the True, the Good, and the Beautiful transcend all disciplines. They then move on to Descartes search for a method to separate opinions from reasonable beliefs, only to end up with some 20th century philosopher claiming that what is really the case is that there is no way to know what is the case. The course has provided them with alternative ways of looking at the world, ways which conflict. The question is, however, which way is more reasonable? Which philosopher's view more closely resembles "what is the case"? The problem is, as I have pointed out, if students opt for the postmodern anti-realist position with respect to knowledge, they cannot hope to pass reasoned judgment among alternative epistemologies. This is because the anti-realist position denies the possibility of objective reasons. Every belief becomes a mere opinion void of epistemic warrant.

If we limit the rules for determining rational beliefs to the disciplines, we are also faced with the problem of handling disagreements between disciplines. Without some set of meta-disciplinary rules to guide discussion and the formation of rational beliefs, interdisciplinary dialogue and inquiry become meaningless exchanges void of the possibility of members in one discipline showing the others where they have erred. For example, when chemists and sociologists discuss the merits of various experimental models, they must assume, unless each is simply an ideologue with no respect for reasons, that there are meta-disciplinary reasons for adopting one model over the alternatives. To deny the possibility of such meta-disciplinary rules trivializes interdisciplinary inquiry.

So, it seems to me there are compelling reasons to be very cautious about taking the anti-realist position as a reasonable one to hold. In short, it legitimizes too much where any claim can be 'true,' leaves us with no rational way to settle disagreements, trivializes the notion of inquiry, and leaves us with no way to identify a discipline. I think that if one is going to teach critical thinking, one had better be a realist with a fallibilist twist: believing in a world with properties that inquiring minds can discover, while understanding that any of our present beliefs about the way things are could be wrong.

Anti-realists, with their view about the relativity of knowledge, make a mockery of critical thinking-if what we mean by critical thinking is coming to a reasoned judgment with respect to an issue after weighing the available evidence and arguments.

ENDNOTES

1"Epistemology and Pedagogy," Inquiry, Vol. 10, No.2, October 1992. Hereafter EP followed by the page. In February of 1993, Robert Sutton responded critically to some of the ideas in my article in the February 1993 edition of Inquiry. I apologize for being so late with this response, but I have been "under the gun" of two publishers for completing textbooks and simply have not had the time for scholarly work. With the texts completed, let the dialogue continue.

2 Grant Cornwall, "Postmodernism and Teaching: Confessions of an Ex-Realist," Proteus, Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 1991, p.34.

3 Cornwall, p.34.

4 Robert Sutton, "The Right Method?" Inquiry, Vol. 11, No. 1, February, 1993, pp.12-15. Hereafter RM followed by the page.

5 EP, p.15.

6 EP, p.15.

7 See Roger Trigg's Reason and Commitment (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973), Reality at Risk: A Defense of Realism in Philosophy and the Sciences (London: Simon and Schuster, 1989), Rationality and Science (Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers, 1993); Harvey Siegel's Relativism Refuted (Boston: D. Reidel, 1988); James Harris's Against Relativism (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1992) to name a few recent books pointing out the problems with anti-realism.
For my more technical arguments against epistemological relativism see Science, Ethics, and Technological Assessment, 2nd edition (Boston: American Press, 1994), chapter one; "Can Critical Thinking Survive the Postmodern Challenge?" Inquiry, 7:1, February, 1991, pp. 8-17; "Is Critical Thinking Guilty of Unwarranted Reductionism," Journal of Thought, 24, Spr-Sum, 1989, pp.93-111, and "Critical Thinking, Postmodernism, and Rational Evaluation," Informal Logic (forthcoming 1995).
I sometimes wonder if philosophers are not like Kuhn's scientists practicing "normal science." That is, they tend to look at evidence and arguments which agree with their preferred positions and never take the opposition seriously. What counts as severe problems for some are merely minor anomalies for others. It seems to me that realists (like me) have a duty to read (and take seriously) anti-realists such as Richard Rorty and company, and anti-realists need to take the arguments of Trigg and company very seriously. Unfortunately, we seldom do.

8 Students are probably no different from Nicholas Rescher's practicing scientists. In his A System of Pragmatic Idealism, Volume 1: Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) Rescher claims that for practicing scientists "inquiry, as we standardly conceive it, is predicated on the commitment to an inquiry-independent reality (263)." We inquire because we believe there is a world out there and we have the potential to know it.

9 For a complete treatment of this argument see Harvey Siegel's, "Relativism, Truth, and Incoherence," Synthese 68, 1986, pp 225-259.