Helen Beetham (H.Beetham@plymouth.ac.uk)
Fri, 17 Sep 1999 16:16:11 +0100
From: Helen Beetham <H.Beetham@plymouth.ac.uk> Subject: Predictability Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 16:16:11 +0100
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Hello Paul,
I'd like to weigh in on the side of discourse again (remember that here in the UK we are only
a stone's throw from France, and these days there is even a tunnel to facilitate the transfer
of rabid new philosophies).
You say of the 'discourse' model that it is as monolithic as the empiricist model, attempting
to impose:
> a single way
> of understanding how people acquire knowledge, of what knowledge
> is and of how knowledge affects our action in the social and
> physical world.
I would disagree. Cultural theory, activity theory or discourse analysis (whichever your preferred
flavour) look at how the acquisition and use of knowledge by individuals is conditioned by the social
and historical circumstances in which they find themselves. This is not despairing relativism, unless
you believe that social and historical systems are radically un-knowable in a way which, say, the orbit
of the planets isn't. We're interested in exactly how specific knowledge practices and products (such
as empiricism, such as the copernican system) relate to other systems of production, value and
representation e.g.religion, state power, poetry, IFETS discussion list...
While the empiricist says that the pre-copernican model of the universe was simply wrong, the discourse
analyst expects our own post-copernican model to be falsified by new conditions of knowledge-production
which we can't yet forsee. Incidentally, how many in our society actually understand the 'modern' view of the
universe? People who who read their horoscopes on the internet, it could be argued, are more 'primitive' in their
worldview than agrarian people who observe the sun and calculate when best to plant their seeds. Modern society
offers a truly complex set of circumstances for analysis!
Paul says
> I am left with an attempt to build a model of the world that
> will allow me to act in the world. My acting in the world being an
> attempt to achieve what seem desirable goals.
> In doing this discourse is necessary, but so equally is the
> assumption that I do actually know something.
I would agree absolutely, except that I don't believe we arrive at 'what seem desireable goals' as
individuals but as members of particular communities. What tools do you have to 'build a model of
the world' other than the shared tools of a common language and agreed discursive practices?
The assumption that we actually know something is probably a human necessity - I do wonder how
radical deconstructive philosophers manage to get out of bed in the mornings when they have to reinvent
themselves from the ground up. But in pre-copernican times that assumption would be founded on rather
a different set of beliefs (e.g. in a Christian God who created the knowable world and Adam who ate the
fruit of the tree of knowledge). Today it might be founded on empiricism, Deweyan pragmatism, or even
discourse theory - though we'd probably argue over what it means to 'know' something which is where
this whole predictability thing started.
I believe we might escape the circularity of this particular argument by looking at some of the work done
by Activity Theorists such as Vygotsky, and by e.g. Wertsch, Cole and Engstrom: even Austin and Searle's
speech act theory which is less concerned with how we know what we know than what we do when we put
that knowledge into words.
All the best
Helen
'Thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile, irresistible, and indestructible. It pervades the air...
Now she is a flock of birds, flies abroad to all the four winds of heaven, and occupies at once all the points
of air and of space...'
Victor Hugo, on the invention of printing.
Helen Beetham
Senior Lecturer
Educational Development
University of Plymouth
Drake Circus
Plymouth PL4 8AA
tel: +44 1752 232346
fax: +44 1742 232330
email: hbeetham@plymouth.ac.uk
http://sh.plym.ac.uk/eds/elt/
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