H.L. Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore" whose birthday I commemorated on yesterday's page (find out more about him here), provides a splendid summary of Schopenhauer in his book on "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche":
"Intelligence is not the source of will, but its effect. When life first appeared on earth, it had but one aim and object: that of perpetuating itself. The instinct was still at the bottom of every function of all living beings. Intelligence grew out of the fact that Mankind, in the course of ages, began to notice that certain manifestations of the will to live were followed by certain invariable results. This capacity of perceiving was followed by a capacity for remembering, which in turn produced a capacity for anticipating. An intelligent man was merely one who remembered so many facts (the result either of personal experience or of the transmitted experience of others) that he could separate them into groups and observe their relationship, one to the other, and hazard a close guess as to their future effects, i.e. could reason about them."
Bloom's Taxonomy, a hundred years ahead of Bloom's Taxonomy; though only thirty years ahead of Pavlov's Dog (see Sept 14), which we must not allow ourselves to forget (choice of words here entirely deliberate) is itself a version of the same paradigm.
Schopenhauer, as Mencken explains, places human knowledge and the ability to reason specifically in the realm of memory. I remember and therefore I know; I know and therefore I can assess, evaluate, draw conclusions, rethink them. Memory can come from personal or from learned experience.
So, for example: I remember the scent attached to that whiteness (a dog cannot, presumably, identify the whiteness as being specifically a laboratory assistant), which always strokes my fur and feeds me, and so I salivate whenever it becomes visible to me – the observation which triggered Pavlov's research into conditioning as an aspect of behavioural psychology.
But dogs are dogs and humans are humans. So, for example: I remember the scent attached to that brown-and-pinkness (a newborn baby cannot, presumably, know if the brown-and-pinkness is a wet-nurse or its mother, or even that it is specifically a nipple), which always strokes my head and feeds me, and so I smile whenever it becomes visible to me (and I like it to so much that I will go on seeking it, per omnia saecula saeculorum, forever and ever, without end, even beyond wet-nurse and mummy).
But grown-up humans are more sophisticated than newborn humans. So, for example: I remember the scent attached to that brown-and-blackness (a sleep-deprived torture victim cannot, presumably, identify the brown-and-blackness as being specifically this torture weapon as opposed to that one), which always tears my hair out by the follicles and feeds me human excrement, and so I volunteer whatever information it requires as soon as it becomes visible to me.
But free human beings are different. So, for example: I remember the pleasure of my classroom teacher when I finally got the answers to her quiz correct, and the gifts my parents gave me when they heard the news, and the envy of my elder brother who always got 100% no matter what (but never once received a praise-gift), and the group of girls who finally accepted me at school, when they had always called me "thick" and "stupid" in the past, and the boy in the senior year who showed me how to make the cheat-sheet in such a way no one would ever catch me, but only on condition that I let him kiss me.
Societies are no different from individuals in the ways that memory (and deliberate forgetting, or careful mis-remembering) is used to train us – this is why the teaching of History in schools is so important to the political parties, who rarely touch a Maths or Art curriculum. "I remember the route to work because I drive it every day" is apparently no different from "I remember that we were slaves in Egypt because I recite it in the Shema each morning". Except that, in fact, the two are diametrically opposite. For the driver: it has now been pointed out to me that there was always a much better, quicker, and prettier route to work, but this is the first I have heard about it; it really doesn't matter for the past, which is gone, but in the future I will be happier for using it. But for the worshipper: It has now been pointed out to me that we never actually were slaves in Egypt; the term "avadim" means "worshippers" as well as slaves, and refers to a particular religious group in Egypt, and not to bondsmen at all; the impact of this upon the past is absolutely devastating, and I really do not know what I am going to do in the future now that my fundamental truth has been demonstrated as a falsehood.
The difference in each of the above examples is the difference between "learned" and "lived" experience (Augustinian "sense experience" versus the "empirical verifiability" of Roger Bacon was the mediaeval equivalent of this debate; previously it was Aristotle versus Plato). I can only remember what I have experienced, in whatever form I may have experienced it. I know the route to work because I found it on a map, and never bothered to look at alternatives, or ask anyone if they knew a different route; nor have I ever hit upon an alternative by chance on other journeys. This map, and the daily driving, are the limits of my experience. The same is true of my knowledge of history; my Hebrew school, my Jewish community, the history books, the Bible itself and all its commentators, my several Rabbis as I moved from denomination to denomination, even the atheists who wrote against the Bible, all without exception accepted the "slavery" version of history, and so it became my map until chance showed me this different one.
For an educator in an "open", "liberal" society, the sort of society which Bloom's Taxonomy aspires to educating, personal experience becomes essential, because it is always more authentic, and therefore embeds itself at a deeper level of cognition than does the learned, the taught. If a society willfully limits the range of personal and learned experiences (family or state control of television, radio, newspapers and the Internet are the obvious forms of this), and directs those for whom it is responsible only to those experiences that it wishes them to lodge in memory, then the capacity to control their knowledge, of themselves and of the world, is infinite. Most religions, and all closed ideologies such as Communism and Fascism, apply this logic fastidiously; it is why Plato insisted on banning the poetikos, "the actively engaged brain", from the Republic. To broaden the range of personal experience is to direct the individual towards their own knowledge, their own opinions: in short, away from conformity and towards individuality.
Schophenhauer takes this a step further: describing how memory becomes knowledge, and, more importantly, distinguishing knowledge which is really only information, from knowledge which is the consequence of assessment, evaluation and finally judgment. I remember the route to work that I drove the first day; I also remember the slightly different routes that I took on each of the following several days (though I still never found that quicker, prettier route). Having experimented with these options, I can now recognize patterns, and from those patterns I can make a decision as to which is the best route. Route A goes past a busy school, which slows me down. Route B has all the STOP signs against me, but Route C has most of them in my favour. Route D takes me to a traffic light with an advantage lane but Route E brings me to the same traffic light from a different direction, without an advantage lane. Therefore I "know" that Routes B and D are my best options (except on Tuesdays when the garbage trucks are out on B, and Thursdays when they close one of the streets on D for a Farmers' Market). In the same way we learn all the lessons of history, of science, of culture. I know how to draw a face because I have drawn faces a thousand times, and each time I looked back to see which parts were unsatisfactory, and improved upon them the next time; but I also looked at teaching books about drawing, and the drawings of great artists before me, and imbibed and absorbed what I could glean from them: the personal and the learned experience combined to enhance knowledge (except that one of the books my teacher recommended insists on using a mathematical technique based on Durer that I find ridiculous, and the one my grandma gave me as a birthday present is now far too basic; and no one learns to draw faces from Picasso's "Demoiselles d'Avignon", a fact I only know because I've tried it).
The faults of our education system lie in the above. Our schools are full of teachers, when they should be full of educators. Whether religious or secular, teachers always direct their children to a specific, and limited range of knowledge, which conforms to the ideas that the teacher wishes to convey: personal opinion possibly, but generally the set curriculum. We limit the teaching of history to make patriots, not historians. We provide religious instruction, rather than religious education, in order to "convert" them to their native faith. We set curriculum that lead to specific careers. We emphasise certain modes of learning – verbal first, written second, then audial; visual only quartiary - which directs them to certain skills that we as a society require. And we perpetuate known failures of our system: if we really want children to learn a foreign language, it would be better to take them for a 6-month exchange to another country, immerse them in the language in every school subject, immerse them in the culture, and then bring them home. Lab work teaches more science than book work. Practical and experiential learning achieves more than front-loading. We have to stop training teachers and start training educators. If, that is, the goal is to build an education system that optimizes the natural and instinctive learning process and maximizes intelligence as the outcome. If all we want is Pavlov's Dog, a catechism that can be learned and recited, a system for "acculturating good citizens" (a euphemism for conditioning, which is itself a euphemism for "brain-washing"), then we are already following the right map.
The process of reasoning is thus describable as:
Perceive - Recognize Patterns - Remember - Anticipate - Group and Observe - Predict by Analysis
We therefore need to provide students with:
A) the widest and broadest range of perception opportunities: data, personal experience, transmitted and learned experience of others.
B) development of the capacity to remember where, in today’s world, everything they no longer need to remember themselves is stored and can be accessed.
C) tools and experience of Anticipation.
D) practice in Grouping, Observing and Predicting by Analysis (Critical Thinking)
What happens if we do the opposite?
Ai) a narrow range of experiences can still produce an amazingly brilliant child, who "appears" to be intelligent because of his or her capacity to absorb and regurgitate a vast amount of material within that narrow range. A child, for example, brought up in a strong religious community; denied access to TV, Internet, movies, pop music; library-controlled; traditionally dressed; expert in every ritual and ceremony of the cult; able to recite the entire liturgy, as well as a thousand years of priestly commentary and discourse, and all the arguments for the cult prepared by the sages of yore; skillful in reciting the canonical political and social history; etc. An incredible mind, that has assimilated and remembered every piece of data, personal and transmitted experience, etc…but only of the cult itself. This person is in fact a complete ignoramus; a "brilliantly intelligent" ignoramus, but an ignoramus nonetheless. Simply, Pavlov's Dog has learned a sophisticated form of barking.
Bi) a photographic memory can learn a thousand words in ten minutes, recite them faultlessly the following day in viva voce or written test, gain a first class pass and the consequent scholarship to the next tier of education; it then deletes the entire file from short-term brain memory, in order to make room for the next circus-trick. Unless the information becomes knowledge at an effective and cognitive level, it might as well never have been learned. Personally I cannot recite the whole of "King Lear" by heart, but I know where to find a text in ten seconds, and how to quick-search that on-line text for the quote that I am looking for: this is because I have the search skills, but also I "know" the play well enough to know what to look for. My friend who can recite the entire play off by heart is a Japanese who does not speak English, other than the text of this and several other Shakespeare plays.
Ci) "Children, here is the data that you need to know. Write it down as I write it on the board. Learn it, with the correct answers, for a test on Thursday." This is catechism, not education; doxology, not critical thinking; propaganda, not information; brainwashing, not teaching. The alternative method is: "so, kids, let's look at this data and see what we can make of it. Your answers will be as good as mine, so long as you can defend them. I am here to help you with the parts you do not understand."
Di) As above in Ci), but without the social cooperation skills, and without early experience of the sort of collaboration skills that will be necessary in adult life.
Bloom's Taxonomy is not really Bloom's Taxonomy at all, though it was named after Benjamin Bloom, who chaired the group (see D above) of educators who devised it, and edited its first expression in print, "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals", in 1954; since when it has gone through several revisions (as it should do: this process of constantly re-assessing and re-evaluating the original Taxonomy, and then updating it as knowledge deepens and improves, is itself a perfect illustration of Bloom's Taxonomy).
We all believe the lessons of our personal experience, and few are they whose personal experience is broader than the narrow range of what we are taught both to believe and disbelieve; few are they who have come to these beliefs, independently, as a consequence of reflection, critical thinking, experience and mature judgement. And of course all of us are unwilling to accept that our beliefs, whether taught or learned, conditioned or experienced, might possibly be false. Historical examples of this, from flat-earth theory to the virtues of imperialism, from homophobia to gay pride, from Communism to Market Capitalism, from monogamy to free love, are simply too many to require listing; more interesting is to find a means of testing which of our beliefs founder on the same rocks today. The existence of democracy in the world, or God? The value of human rights as intrinsic rights, rather than as self-bestowed privileges and narcissistic self-entitlements? The dangers implicit in global warming (as opposed to the possibility that it might actually be beneficial. because it is our only chance of dealing with the even greater problem, of human over-population; this, rather than the more common argument against their even being such a warming).
To assist in this process, I have come up with a very basic "self-testing map", one which I hope others will assess, evaluate, improve, or simply recommend rejecting in favour of a better one. It goes like this:
Ask yourself: can you imagine a situation in which one plus one does not add up to two?
If your knee-jerk reply was: this is impossible, one plus one will always equal two; it is a fact, an immutable law of mathematics – then you are describing a person who has been taught and told, whose personal experience is limited, who lacks the skills necessary for critical thinking.
One plus one equals four, where one is any pair (e.g. shoes, socks, apples)
One plus one equals one, where one is one half.
One plus one equals one, where one egg plus one cup of milk plus one tomato plus one onion plus one red pepper, lightly fried, equals one perfect omelette.
One plus one equals eighty-four, where one is the Kentai word for forty-two (Kentai is a language that has not yet been invented, but will be, perhaps in Africa in the late 24th century, or in a novel by a character from the works of Borges.)
One plus one equals two, where two legs are good, but four legs are better.
One plus one equals three, following an edict by the President declaring the number two to be a shibboleth, the pronunciation of which will lead to death by firing squad and a period in exile for the guilty person’s family.
One plus one equals three, using binary rather than decimal integers.
One plus one equals eleven, based on the location rather than the value of the integers.
“One plus one” is the technical term in 28th century Sweden for what used to be called, back in those primordial days when human beings were scarcely more cognitively developed than Pavlov’s Dog, and gave their answers in school work in much the manner torture-victims gave theirs to their Inquisitors, as “Bloom’s Taxonomy”.
Other possibilities also exist, based on linguistic variations and the homophonic nature of the word one (won, Juan, etc); I leave you to reflect, think critically, apply experience and make a mature judgement of your own to these. Barking is not permitted, though I am quite sure that when my dog does bark, the sound that comes out is not "woof" but "Pavlov".
I have placed this blog-entry under September 13th, which was the date of Bloom's death, in 1999, and also happens to be the date on which I am posting it, in 2014. I would have preferred to place it on his birthdate, February 21st (1913), but that entry already contains a piece on Spinoza, who was excommunicated precisely for applying Schopenhauer and Bloom, though he could not have known that; and on Trotsky, who provides a fascinating example of how personal experience without proper implementation of Schopenhauer and Bloom can drive a man from one form of acculturation into another even worse.
At second best I would have preferred to place this entry on February 22nd, which was Schopenhauer's birthdate in 1788, and actually the reason why my very first posting for this blog was on that date; but that date already includes an entry on Sanctorius, who was martyred that day for daring to apply Schopenhauer and Bloom (though he too could not have known that).
That left me September 21st, the date of Schopenhauer's death in 1860, but September 21st already has an entry on Saint Matthew and his Gospel, whose canonical status is a perfect illustration of the way in which Ai above was the determining factor in European history, and education, for more than a thousand years, and led to Spinoza, Trotsky, Sanctorius, Schopenhauer and Bloom.
Which leaves me September 13th, the wrong date, but at least one that I have chosen, by myself, as a consequence of finding out as many facts as are available, assessing them, evaluating them, and then using my critical faculties to make a judgement of my own. Schopenhauer and Bloom would be proud of me!
Amber pages
Samuel Wilson, the man who would bequeath his name to his nation as "Uncle Sam", born today in 1766
Milton Hershey, candy maker, born today in 1857
Sherwood Anderson, author, born today in 1876
J.B. Priestley, English critic, playwright, and novelist, born today in 1894
The erection of Hadrian's Wall, dividing England from Scotland, begun today in 122 CE
Rhinoceros first seen in New York, today in 1826. I would like to think that this was Ionesco's play rather than the African animal, but alas the play wasn't yet written, and anyway that premiered in Düsseldorf not New York, and only in 1959. If there are/were indeed rhinoceroi in north America, can it really have taken until 1826 for anyone to notice one? (And by the way, it isn't true that rhinos in NYC are now extinct - friends of mine saw three rhinos, playing most un-rhino-like, in Astor Place, down in the Village, literally last week)
Chiang Kai-Shek became President of China, today in 1943 (didn't last very long though; the Maoist Revolution started in 1945)
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