Here are the abstracts for the first two essays, which showcase the range of topics that interest PIPs members. Following presentation of the essays we have smaller scale "enquiries" in groups of half a dozen or so, then each group feeds back to the whole.
"Logic, Nature and Truth" (Bernadette Hughes)
Problem: Is innate knowledge possible; and if it is, how might it inform us about reality?
A biological response: Evidence that supports the argument. If genes are determined, in part, by external factors such as environmental conditions, then it would seem that an organism must have the capacity for certain external factors to have build into it patterns or structures that will tend to promote its survival.
Central argument: Reasons to support the conclusion. The world is structured, we are a product of those structures; therefore, those structures will be innately reflect in our being. So, our innate natural structures reflect the natural structures of the world.
Conclusion: We can understand the world, in highly reliable ways, by making sense of the innate structures.
Here are a few of the things that came up during our enquiry on Bernadette's essay.
I was reminded of Wordsworth's poem, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" (1807) which addresses this topic of innate knowledge:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy; (ll.58–70)
There are religious, spiritual or cultural traditions that would contend that a child is born with innate knowledge (indeed, some of them would go so far as to say that a child comes into the world possessed of all knowledge) and then the world beats it out of them; that our life is a continual process of forgetting. Furthermore, isn't such a belief in innate knowledge part of the justification for reincarnation? Easter traditions and philosophies would have something to say about the topic of this essay, but they're not represented here.
It made me think of how we, as cultures and societies, create grand narratives or meta narratives that we buy into, consciously or unconsciously, to explain our collective history and our personal stories. It's as if there's an ongoing story and we appear in chapter XX of that story (and exit from it in chapter XXX!). This could also be related to our beliefs in cause and effect (think of Hume's billiard balls here).
Could the capacity for language being encoded in our genes (after Chomsky) be classed as this kind of "innate" knowledge? Language underpins everything about being human. I'm familiar with evidence from research that newborns show observable, verifiable communication skills as early as 20 minutes after delivery. If that's not innate knowledge, then what is?
Innate knowledge proves a base, a platform that promotes our survival, not just as a physical species, but as humans - we come into the world prepped for a sort of Human 101.
Interesting how there's a blurring of knowledge, motor skills and instinctual behaviour evident in the enquiries and feedback.
Much of what we've talked about in this part of the programme resurfaces in different but related forms over the rest of the weekend (of course!)
"The Challenge of the Big Society" (Arthur Adlen)
The government's promotion of the "Big Society" is an ideological attack on the Welfare State and public services. For many years people involved in voluntary organisations and community groups have called for more power to deliver local services themselves. The government is now challenging us to do just that. I believe that, as citizens, we are between a rock and a hard place in facing up to this challenge. Citizenship should enable us to participate in the running of political affairs, and strive for the "good life", with the institutions of social life providing a means to that end. Faced with the choice of losing public services we will have to take up the running of those we are capable of running and campaigning to save those we cannot. Otherwise we are idiots.
There are clear implications in Arthur's presentation that Big Society would be, in effect, the introduction of a very modern kind of slavery. He also made the memorable point that a large part of the reason why no one knows what Big Society is comes from the fact that the name is nonsense. He said it's like when a rock band picks two names out of the air and sticks them together, like "Zodiac Soup" (that one's got legs: I'm going to do my best to make sure that these two words become synonymous with "Big Society"!)
Arthur is using "idiots" in its original sense, from the Greek, denoting members of the community who have the right to participate in the democratic process, but - for reasons best known to themselves - abstain from doing so.
We discuss the issue of public libraries and the possibility of them being staffed by volunteers. I wonder if our discussion of the social necessity of public libraries might be seen in 50 years time as being about as relevant and quaint as people who campaigned to save public laundries (the "steamy" as it was known in Glasgow).
PIPs could be seen as a medium or forum for discussion on the nature of our society and its relation to public services etc. People talking together, rather than being talked at by experts, government figures and so on. This might be a way to figure out the meaning of "Big Society".
After lunch, we have a presentation from Stephen Law. Stephen is editor of Think - the journal of The Royal Institute of Philosophy. He's Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London. He's the author of several book, of which the latest is Believing Bullshit. His blog is worth following.
Stephen presented on The Evil God Challenge - the philosophical hypothesis that there is just as much evidence (if not more) for the existence of an all-powerful, all-hating, evil Creator God as there is for its opposite.
Later in the afternoon, there's a meeting for organisers of local chapters of PIPs. I'm not involved in that one, so take the opportunity to do a bit of blogging (natch!)
Dinner seems to take an awful long time. We're seated at table for the best part of an hour before our first course shows up (despite having been asked to order this evening's meal a the end of last night's - I couldn't really see that idea working, especially when no one seems to be sitting in the same seats as we were the night before). Never mind, we're philosophical about it.
I'm afraid I miss the guest speaker this evening, Derek Tatton on "Community Education". As for American Beauty, the movie that brings the programme to a close, it gets started late enough that it could have been replaced with Sleeping Beauty!
In the photo above: the founding fathers of PIPs (l-r: Paul Doran, Rob Lewis, Arthur Adlen)
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