Ph D - Epistemology LOR Oct. 15, 2011 ________________ Essay I: Select only 5 questions.

Name: JOVENAL F. Score:__

1. What is hermeneutic circle? Discuss Gadamers hermeneutics. What is the im portance of this science to our modern day usage, particularly textual criticism ? 2. Do you personally agree with Dewey that truth is elusive in this changin g world? What influence can you cite on Deweys philosophy in the present understa nding of truth? 3. What is the function of concepts according to Jacques Maritain? How are they (concepts) useful in our day to day encounter with beings / realities? 4. Describe the concept paradigm shifting according Thomas Kuhn? What is the role of anomaly in this concept? In what way can you observe the influence of th is concept in our present context? 5. Deconstruction is a philosophy that says nothing. Explain Derridas method of philosophizing. What is deference? What is deferance? How are they helpful in sorting out the purity of past concepts and philosophies? 6. Discuss Michel Foucaults project of the abandonment of the historicity of ideas. How does it affect our linear/timeline concept of understanding the hist ory of civilization? 7. What is the Post-modern condition of knowledge according to Jean-Francoi s Lyotard? Discuss his criticism on the influence of the Enlightenment period on the formulation of meta-narratives/grand narratives which resulted in the unive rsalization of big theories which govern human life. Essay II: Discuss the development of knowledge from the ancient to the present time. Give a personal comment on the present situation of knowledge acquisition in this internet age.

1. What is hermeneutic circle? Discuss Gadamers hermeneutics. What is the im portance of this science to our modern day usage, particularly textual criticism ? The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text her meneutically. It refers to the idea that one s understanding of the text as a wh

ole is established by reference to the individual parts and one s understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor an y individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not mak e it impossible to interpret a text; rather, it stresses that the meaning of a t ext must be found within its cultural, historical, and literary context. Gadamer (1975) further developed this concept, leading to what is recogn ized as a break with previous hermeneutic traditions. While Heidegger saw the he rmeneutic process as cycles of self-reference that situated our understanding in a priori prejudices, Gadamer reconceptualized the hermeneutic circle as an iter ative process through which a new understanding of a whole reality is developed by means of exploring the detail of existence. Gadamer viewed understanding as l inguistically mediated, through conversations with others in which reality is ex plored and an agreement is reached that represents a new understanding. The cent rality of conversation to the hermeneutic circle is developed by Donald Schn, who characterizes design as a hermeneutic circle that is developed by means of "a c onversation with the situation." The Importance of Hermeneutics The necessity of a science of interpretation is apparent from the diversitie s of mind and culture among men. Personal intercourse between individuals of the same nation and language is often difficult and embarrassing by reason of their different styles of thought and expression. Even the Apostle Peter found in Pau l s epistles things which were difficult to understand (2nd Pet. 3:16). The man of broad and liberal culture lives and moves in a different world from the unlet tered peasant, so much so that sometimes the ordinary conversation of the one is scarcely intelligible to the other. Different, schools of metaphysics and oppos ing systems of theology have often led their several advocates into strange misu nderstandings. The speculative philosopher, who ponders long on abstract themes, and by deep study constructs a doctrine or system clear to his own mind, may fi nd it difficult to set forth his views to others so as to prevent all misconcept ion. His whole subject matter lies beyond the range of common thought. The heare rs or readers, in such a case, must, like the philosopher himself, dwell long up on the subject. They must have terms defined, and ideas illustrated, until, step by step, they come to imbibe the genius and spirit of the new philosophy. But e specially great and manifold are the difficulties of understanding the writings of those who differ from us in language and nationality. The learned themselves become divided in their essays to decipher and interpret the records of the past . Volumes and libraries have been written to elucidate the obscurities of the Gr eek and Roman classics. The foremost scholars and linguists of the present gener ation are busied in the study and exposition of the sacred books of the Chinese, the Hindus, the Parsees, and the Egyptians, and, after all their learned labors , they disagree in the translation and solution of many a passage. How much more might we expect great differences of opinion in the interpretation of a book li ke the Bible, composed at sundry times and in many parts and in modes, and rangi ng through many departments of literature! What obstacles might reasonably be ex pected in the interpretation of a record of divine revelation, in which heavenly thoughts, unknown to men before, were made to express themselves in the imperfe ct formulas of human speech! The most contradictory rules of interpretation have been propounded, and expositions have been made to suit the peculiar tastes and prejudices of writers or to maintain preconceived opinions, until all scientifi c method has been set at nought, and each interpreter became a law unto himself. Hence the necessity of well-defined and self-consistent principles of Scripture interpretation. Only as exegetes come to adopt common principles and methods of procedure, will the interpretation of the Bible attain the dignity and certaint y of an established science. 2. Do you personally agree with Dewey that truth is elusive in this changin g world? What influence can you cite on Deweys philosophy in the present understa nding of truth?

I would strongly disagree what John Dewey claim, together with his fell ow founders of Pragmatism, that truth or meaning of an idea or a proposition lie s in its observable practical consequences rather than anything metaphysical. Th eir contention can be summarized by the phrase whatever works, is likely true. Be cause reality changes, whatever works will also change thus, truth must also be ch angeable and no one can claim to possess any final or ultimate truth. This woul d inevitably embrace the tenets of relativism or subjectivism. Relativism is incorrect because it says that all knowledge depends on th e context. It s a bit like saying that all questions are ambiguous just because some are and because precision is difficult. Also, relativism is ambiguous about whether contextual knowledge is absolutely true within that context; many relat ivists object to the idea of any absolute, permanent, unitary truth. But why sho uld the truth for a given context ever change? Relativism provides an argument t hat the context is important, but no argument that the truth can change if we ke ep the context constant. Because of this era of technology, I should say that, todays generation i s both blessed and victim. Blessed in the sense that todays generation has a grea ter access to information worldwide through the availability of computers, lapto ps, ipods, internet and many others. Victim in the sense that this people is de prived of their creativity and time. They are easily poisoned by information co ming from different independent or freelance thinkers. Hence, subjectivism find s its wide avenue, in the world today. Yes, it is true that everything in the w orld changes (Hiracletus) but the primary principle of change which is change it self remains. Change which is the truth remains the same forever. I am a stron g adherent of truth as objective. We have some knowledge that doesn t depend on context, called universal knowledge. It s knowledge that equally well applies to all situations. For examp le, the laws of physics don t have exceptions depending on which culture you liv e in. Gravity is the same no matter what the historical context or what your rel igion is. Physics is general purpose. Similarly, water consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, everywhere and forever. And 2+2=4 even if the majorit y opinion in my society thinks otherwise. The idea of truth as objective is simply that no matter what we believe to be the case, some things will always be true and other things will always be false. Our beliefs, whatever they are, have no bearing on the facts of the world around us. That which is true is always true even if we stop believing it and e ven if we stop existing at all. Truth may be elusive but it does not mean that truth becomes a non-truth. Deweys philosophy of his understanding of truth is, however, very influen tial. In the field of the transmission of knowledge to students this philosophy is effective. Educators must be extra smart and resourceful in trying to look for their ways into knowing the world of the learners. Educators have to be cr eative in their teaching method to bring the learners to the truth amidst the re ality of the changing world. 3. Describe the concept paradigm shifting according Thomas Kuhn? What is the role of anomaly in this concept? In what way can you observe the influen ce of this concept in our present context? In 1962, Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolution, and fathere d, defined and popularized the concept of paradigm shift. Kuhn argues that scienti fic advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a series of peaceful interlud es punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions, and in those revolutions on e conceptual world view is replaced by another. He said that Paradigm Shift is a change from one way of thinking to another. It s a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happ en, but rather it is driven by agents of change. He gave an example of agriculture that changed early primitive society. The primitive Indians existed for centuries roaming the earth constantly hunting

and gathering for seasonal foods and water. However, by 2000 B.C., Middle Ameri ca was a landscape of very small villages, each surrounded by patchy fields of c orn and other vegetables. He said further that agents of change helped create a paradigm-shift mov ing scientific theory from the Ptolemaic system (the earth at the center of the universe) to the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe), and moving from Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Physics. Both movements eventually changed the world view. These transformations were gradual as old bel iefs were replaced by the new paradigms creating "a new gestalt". Likewise, the printing press, the making of books and the use of vernacu lar language inevitable changed the culture of a people and had a direct affect on the scientific revolution. Johann Gutenberg s invention in the 1440 s of mova ble type was an agent of change. Books became readily available, smaller and eas ier to handle and cheap to purchase. Masses of people acquired direct access to the scriputures. Attitudes began to change as people were relieved from church d omination. Similarly, agents of change are driving a new paradigm shift today. The signs ar e all around us. For example, the introduction of the personal computer and the internet have impacted both personal and business environments, and is a catalys t for a Paradigm Shift. Newspaper publishing has been reshaped into Web sites, b logging, and web feeds. The Internet has enabled or accelerated the creation of new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking sites. We are shifting from a mechanistic, manufacturing, indu strial society to an organic, service based, information centered society, and i ncreases in technology will continue to impact globally. Change is inevitable. I t s the only true constant. Kuhn views that science has no ultimate end or goal, rather it just cont inues to cycle, changing paradigms when the weight of anomalies weigh down on th e current paradigm s suitability to operate in the current environment. The new paradigm answers the problems in the previous paradigm, but at the expense of op ening up holes elsewhere that lead to further anomalies, and so on. For him this cycle starts with a Normal Science. This is the period when there is a general consensus (among scientists) about the current paradigm. The consensus allows science to appear to progress, as there are no opposing school s in the scientific community. Then anomaly comes in inevitably. In this stage f laws are discovered in a paradigm. Anomalies are often discovered, but are regul arly resolved or are not taken seriously enough because there is no other viable alternative to the paradigm. When enough anomalies (or a serious enough anomaly ) is found which cast doubt upon the accuracy of the paradigm to explain its phe nomena, then the paradigm falls into a crisis state. Typically, these anomalies occur when new fields of evidence are uncovered, such as through the invention o f new technology - e.g. the discovery of new continents to observe plant and ani mal life; the invention of the telescope, the discovery of DNA, etc. In effect C rises is brought to the surface of which Kuhn argues real progress flourishes (a s it leads to paradigm shift). In a Crisis state, the traditional paradigm is do ubted by the scientific community, who lack a consensus and debate which of the competing paradigms should be adopted. New paradigms are always being proposed. In this stage, the scientific community abandons the former paradigm and begins to reach consensus over a new one, which may be radically different from its pr edecessor but is better equipped to explain the phenomena it seeks to. At the en d of this period, science is in a new stage of normal science , and may continu e around the cycle again. The new paradigm should not be held to be truth, as it could well suffer the same fate as the last paradigm. It is, however, fitter than the last paradigm in terms of explanatory power (it can explain what the la st paradigm couldn t), just as newer species in evolution are fitter than former species and better equipped to survive. Hence, the role of anomaly for Kuhn is so crucial because it paves the way for the so-called Paradigm Shift. The influence of the concept of Kuhns Paradigm Shift in our present conte xt is so observable. In this present era of mankind, man is always in quest for self realization with his hope to know also very importantly his world. Mans gr

eatest moment upon a discovery of new things can attest to this claim. Academes and many other institutions are spending huge amount of money for researches. I am convinced that all of these activities are geared towards to prove and disp rove the existing paradigm. This would count very greatly the theses and disser tations in IIREF. 4. Deconstruction is a philosophy that says nothing. Explain Derridas method of philosophizing. What is deference? What is deferance? How are they helpful in sorting out the purity of past concepts and philosophies? Deconstruction is a term introduced by Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he so ught to apply Martin Heidegger s concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual rea ding. Heidegger s term referred to a process of exploring the categories and con cepts that tradition has imposed on a word, and the history behind them. Derrida opted for deconstruction over the literal translation destruction to suggest pr ecision rather than violence. The term "deconstructionism" is sometimes applied as a title for Derrida s school of thought, but Derrida is more often classified as a post-structuralist. Derrida s work can be reduced to ontological politics. In describing deconstruction, Derrida famously observed that "there is n othing outside the text." That is to say, all of the references used to interpre t a text are themselves texts, even the "text" of reality as a reader knows it. There is no truly objective, non-textual reference from which interpretation can begin. Deconstruction, then, can be described as an effort to understand a text through its relationships to various contexts. Derrida s method of philosophyzing consisted in demonstrating all the fo rms and varieties of this originary complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. His way of achieving this was by conducting thorough, careful, s ensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, with an ear to what in those texts runs counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating this difficulty in establishing truth and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways that this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and destructuring effects . For Derrida deconstruction denotes the pursuing of the meaning of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions u pon which it is foundedsupposedly showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible . It is an approach that may be deployed in phi losophy, literary analysis, or other fields. Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconci lable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one inte rpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an in terpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point. Derrida refers to this p oint as an aporia or difficulty in establishing truth in the text, and terms dec onstructive reading "aporetic." Derrida initially resisted granting to his approach the overarching name "deconstruction," on the grounds that it was a precise technical term that coul d not be used to characterize his work generally. Nevertheless, he eventually ac cepted that the term had come into common use to refer to his textual approach, and Derrida himself increasingly began to use the term in this more general way. Differance just is what differance means. Saying diffrence and diffrance m akes no difference in French. . It is this tiny difference that Derrida is usin g in the Differance article to draw our attention to the permanently absent, inaud ible and invisible trace. So we can say that Differance is the word that Derrida coins to describe and perform the way in which any single meaning of a concept or text arises only by the removal of other possible meanings, which are themsel ves only deferred, left over, for their possible activation in other contexts. Differance thus both describes and performs the situation, or the conditions, un

der in but ons

which all identities and meanings can occur so that any text can be repeated an infinite number of possible contexts for an infinite number of potential undetermined addressees. It is a powerful modification of the ordinary noti of identity and difference. Derrida calls this joining and separating of signs diffrance (Derrida 197 4), a device that can only be read and not heard when diffrance and diffrence are pronounced in French. The a is a written mark that differentiates independently of the voice, the privileged medium of metaphysics. In this sense, diffrance as the spacing of difference, as archi-writing, would be the gram of grammatology. Howev er, as Derrida remarks: There cannot be a science of difference itself in its ope ration, as it is impossible to have a science of the origin of presence itself, that is to say of a certain non-origin (Derrida 1974). Instead, there is only the marking of the trace of difference, that is, deconstruction. Because at its functional level all language is a system of differences, says Derrida, all language, even when spoken, is writing, and this truth is sup pressed when meaning is taken as an origin, present and complete unto itself. Te xts that take meaning or being as their theme are therefore particularly suscept ible to deconstruction, as are all other texts insofar as they are conjoined wit h these. For Derrida, written marks or signifiers do not arrange themselves with in natural limits, but form chains of signification that radiate in all directio ns. As Derrida famously remarks, there is no outside-text (Derrida 1974, 158), tha t is, the text includes the difference between any inside or outside. A text, then, is not a book, and does not, strictly speaking, have an author. On the contrary, the name of the author is a signifier linked with others, and there is no maste r signifier present or even absent in a text. This goes for the term diffrance as w ell, which can only serve as a supplement for the productive spacing between sig ns. Therefore, Derrida insists that diffrance is literally neither a word nor a co ncept (Derrida 1982). Instead, it can only be marked as a wandering play of diffe rences that is both a spacing of signifiers in relation to one another and a def erral of meaning or presence when they are read. How, then, can diffrance be characterized and how is it helpful in sortin g out the purity of past concepts and philosophies? Derrida refuses to answer q uestions as to who or what differs, because to do so would suggest there is a proper name for difference instead of endless supplements, of which diffrance is but one. Structurally, this supplemental displacement functions just as, for Heidegger, all names for being reduce being to the presence of beings, thus ignoring the ont ological difference between them. However, Derrida takes the ontological differen ce as one difference among others, as a product of what the idiom diffrance supplem ents. As he remarks: diffrance, in a certain and very strange way, (is) older than t he ontological difference or than the truth of Being (Derrida 1982). Deconstructi on, then, traces the repetitions of the supplement. It is not so much a theory a bout texts as a practice of reading and transforming texts, where tracing the mo vements of diffrance produces other texts interwoven with the first. While there is a certain arbitrariness in the play of differences that result, it is not the arbitrariness of a reader getting the text to mean whatever he or she wants. It is a question of function rather than meaning, if meaning is understood as a te rminal presence, and the signifying connections traced in deconstruction are fir st offered by the text itself. A deconstructive reading, then, does not assert o r impose meaning, but marks out places where the function of the text works agai nst its apparent meaning, or against the history of its interpretation. This is how helpful differance or difference in sorting out the purity of past concepts and philosophies? 5. What is the Post-modern condition of knowledge according to Jean-Francoi s Lyotard? Discuss his criticism on the influence of the Enlightenment peri od on the formulation of meta-narratives/grand narratives which resulted in the universalization of big theories which govern human life. Lyotard said that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the

postmodern age. Observing that this trend has been under way since at the least the end of the 1950s, Lyotard goes on to predict that knowledge -- which has bec ome the major force of production in recent decades -- will increasingly be tran slated into quantities of information, with a corresponding reorientation in the process of research. Lyotard notes that the miniaturisation and commercialisatio n of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classif ied, made available, and exploited. Knowledge in computerised societies is becomi ng exteriorised from knowers. The old notion that knowledge and pedagogy are inext ricably linked has been replaced by a new view of knowledge as a commodity: Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consume d in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is excha nge. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its use- value. Lyotard said that knowledge in the form of an informational commodity in dispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major -perhaps the major -- stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceiv able that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for contr ol of access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor. This is in f act the reality today. Indeed, with the rise of multinational corporations, the very idea of au tonomous nation states begins to break down. The new technologies will hasten an d reinforce this development. The State, Lyotard postulates, will come to be per ceived as a factor of opacity and noise in the commercialization of knowledge. T he idea that learning falls within the purview of the State, as the mind or brai n of society will give way to the view that society exists and progresses only i f the messages circulating within it are rich in information and easy to decode. Lyotard in his time visualize something a shift in the whole system of organize d learning. He said that it is not hard to visualize learning circulating along the same lines as money, instead of for its educational value or political importan ce; the pertinent distinction would no longer be between knowledge and ignorance , but rather, as is the case with money, between payment knowledge and investmen t knowledge -- in other words, between units of knowledge exchanged in a daily m aintenance framework versus funds of knowledge dedicated to optimizing the perfo rmance of a project. Lyotard argues that knowledge and power are two sides of the same questi on. In the West, narrative knowledge has been subjugated by scientific knowledge . The latter is governed by the demand for legitimation and, as a long history o f imperialism from the dawn of Western civilization demonstrates, cannot accept anything that fails to conform to the rules (the requirement for proof or argume ntation) of its own language game. Narratives, by contrast, are legitimated by t he simple fact that they do what they do. In the computer age, he said that the question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of government. The function of the state will change: machi nes will come to play an important role in regulatory and reproductive processes , and the power to make decisions will increasingly be determined by questions o f access to information. Eventually, he said that professors (academics) will no longer be needed: much of the work they currently undertake can and will be tak en over by computerized data network systems. Computerization, he said, could be come the dream instrument for controlling and regulating the market system, exte nded to include knowledge itself and governed exclusively by the performativity principle. This would involve the use of terror. Alternatively, computerization could aid groups discussing metaprescriptives by supplying them with the informa tion they usually lack for making knowledgeable decisions. Lyotard believes we s hould take the second of these two paths and provide free public access to data banks. This would respect both the desire for justice and the desire for the unk nown. The Postmodern would be that which in the modern invokes the unpresentab le in presentation itself, that which refuses the consolation of correct forms,

refuses the consensus of taste permitting a common experience of nostalgia for t he impossible, and inquires into new presentations--not to take pleasure in them , but to better produce the feeling that there is something unpresentable. Lyotar d attacks many of the modern age traditions, such as the "Grand" Narrative or wh at Lyotard termed the Meta(master) narrative (Lyotard 1984). In contrast to the ethnographies written by anthropologists in the first half of the 20th Century, Lyotard states that an all encompassing account of a culture cannot be accomplis hed. On his criticism on the influence of the Enlightenment period on the formulation of meta-narratives/grand narratives which resulted in the universalization of b ig theories which govern human life: Lyotard s claim is characterized by a persistent opposition to universal s, meta-narratives, and generality. He is fiercely critical of many of the univ ersalist claims of the Enlightenment, and several of his arguments serve to und ermine the fundamental principles that generate these broad claims. He argued th at our age (with its postmodern condition) is marked by an incredulity towards meta-narratives. These meta-narrativessometimes grand narratives are grand, large -scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the progress of history, the knowability of everything by science, and the possibility of absolute freedo m. Lyotard argues that we have ceased to believe that narratives of this kind ar e adequate to represent and contain us all. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason post-modernity is characterized by an abundance of micronarratives. In Lyotard s contention, the term language games, sometimes also called phrase r egimens, denotes the multiplicity of communities of meaning, the innumerable and incommensurable separate systems in which meanings are produced and rules for t heir circulation are created. It might appear that the atomization of human beings implied by the noti on of the micronarrative and the language game suggests a collapse of ethics. It has often been thought that universality is a condition for something to be a p roperly ethical statement. Like for instance DO NOT KILL is an ethical statement in a way that DO NOT KILL from others is not. The latter is too particular to b e an ethical statement; it is only ethical if it rests on a universal statement (do not kill from anyone). Lyotard further said that universals are impermissibl e in a world that has lost faith in metanarratives, and so it would seem that et hics is impossible. In effect justice and injustice can only be terms within lan guage games, and the universality of ethics is out of the window. Lyotard argues that notions of justice and injustice do in fact remain in postmodernism. The n ew definition of injustice is indeed to use the language rules from one phrase r egimen and apply them to another. Ethical behaviour is about remaining alert pre cisely to the threat of this injustice, of paying attention to things in their p articularity and not enclosing them within abstract conceptuality. One must bear witness to the differend . Essay II: Discuss the development of knowledge from the ancient to the present time. Give a personal comment on the present situation of knowledge acquisition in this internet age. The study of the history of religious and secular thought reveals that t hroughout the ages great philosophers, sages and religious leaders held differen t views about the comparative values of reason, logic and revelation. As such, t hey can be divided into various groups. There are those who emphasize the role of rationality to a degree that t hey consider it as the only valid means of discovering truth. For them, the only conclusion worthy of acceptance is the one which can be derived through dialect ical logical reasoning based on observed facts. Hence, they believe that truth ( in whatever form they define it) can only be reached through the faculty of reas oning. There are thinkers who believe in the phenomenon of Divine guidance whic h, according to them, plays a definite role in enlightening the human mind, prov

iding it with answers to many unresolved questions. Again there are those who believe that truth can be reached entirely thr ough inner experiences referred to as inspiration . They consider it to be atta inable through a deep search within oneself, as if its blueprint had been imprin ted upon every human soul. They delve deep within themselves, and through an int rospective study attain a fundamental understanding of nature and how it works. Another mode of reaching truth shared both by the religious and secular schools of enquiry is mysticism. Mystification of life seems to be a common tend ency shared by believers and non-believers alike. Mystics may belong to all the categories mentioned above and their methodology could be philosophical or relig ious. Their distinguishing mark is that they enjoy being cryptic. Then there are pseudo-philosophers who use words and phrases that are to o elusive for the common man to understand. Thus they hide their views behind th e mystic screen of their verbosity. There are others however, who have truly sci entific minds but are mystics all the same, as were Pythagoras and Averroes. The y burrow deep in search of the seed of truth and do not remain content with hove ring on the surface of things. To keep track of them with concentration of mind is always rewarding. In religion, we find mystics of different hues and colors. There are tho se who, while accepting and fulfilling the outward observances required by the f orm of religion, strive to find deeper meaning below the surface. Also, there ar e some who overemphasize the inner meaning at the cost of the external form, som etimes doing away with the observances altogether. But followers of religions founded upon revelation do not always remain confined to discussions within the boundaries of revelational truths. In the lat er stages of each religion we also find such debates, as are difficult to be def ined as entirely religious in nature. The same age-old questions are again reviv ed within a new framework. What is reason? What part does it play in human affai rs, and where does revelation stand in relation to logic and reason? It is universally observed that the interplay of various ideas at later stages of a religion s history tends to revert to the confusion which prevailed prior to their advent. It happens because man s influence on religion has always been to break it into factions and to partially revert it to the older mythical ideas and philosophies. It has seldom led to a reunification of differing schoo ls of thought born through the degenerating processes that divide and split reli gions. This degeneration seems to be irreversible. Thousands of years before there were computers, Plato (427-347 B.C.) rec ognized the similarity between at least certain aspects of human thinking and th e apparently determined cause-and-effect behavior exhibited by machines. The Pla tonic debates illuminate as clearly as any modern philosopher the apparent parad ox of the human mind displaying free will while being subject to predictable nat ural laws. In the final analysis, it appears that Plato accepted both views as a n irreducible duality. Such paradoxes, according to Plato, were not to be avoide d; rather, they were the key to a richer understanding of the human condition. Philosophical schools based on Platos thought continued to shape European epistemology, the study of the limits and validity of knowledge into the middle ages through the lasting influence of the Academy he founded and through one of his star pupils, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). The European Renaissance of the seventeenth century and the Enlightenmen t, a philosophical movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, renewed and intensified an emphasis on the scientific method and in particular its appl ication to thinking as a process that could be studied and understood as a pheno menon following natural laws. The rationalism of Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the empiricism of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the physics of Isaac Newton (1642-1 727) were fused by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) into a rigorous view of mans world b ased on knowledge as its principle building block. Modern philosophy has divided into two schools of thought. While often s een as contradicting one another and while frequently clashing with one another indeed, they primarily deal with divergent issues. Existentialism, which is the dominant school of philosophy today in Europe, has its roots in the unorthodox C

hristianity of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and the anti-Christianity of Friedr ich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Existentialism, and a related field, phenomenology, r egard human thought and human existence as describable by scientific analysis, b ut only partially.7 Their emphasis has been on such phenomena as guilt, anxiety, and suffering, which in their views lie beyond fully rational exploration and a re keys to understanding the limits of reason. The modern existentialism of such philosophers and playwrights as Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Samuel Beckett emphasize the role of free will in an apparently purposeless world. A movement still popular in the United States that often clashes with ex istentialism is logical positivism, based on the early work of Ludwig Wittgenste in (1889-1951) and developed by Alfred Ayer and others. Searching for truth in t he foundations of language, logical positivism gave rise to the development of l inguistic theory by Noam Chomsky and others and greatly influenced the emergence of computation theory. The AI movement, which can be said to have its roots in logical positivi sm, has often clashed with the phenomenology of the existentialists, as most rec ently exemplified by the ongoing debate of AI practitioners such as Marvin Minsk y, Seymour Papert, and Ed Feigenbaum with leading AI critic and phenomenologist Hubert Dreyfus. Unfortunately, this debate has been overly personal and divisive and thus has not contributed to a needed synthesis between the two pillars of m odern philosophy. When I was still in elementary and high school, there was no Internet, n o personal computers, no smart phones, no laptops, no eBooks, no DVDS etc. In ot her words, I grew up in the dark ages in a far flung Maragusan in Compostela Vel ley Province. Prior to the arrival of all of the marvelous technology listed abo ve, schools were containers of knowledge and developed curriculum-based courses to transfer this knowledge to their students. It is not surprising then, that curriculum-based courses became the prim ary mode of knowledge transfer, since knowledge was contained within the bounda ries of the school, whether that knowledge came from the teachers employed there or the resources provided by the school. In todays world, knowledge or information can readily be accessed by look ing it up with an Internet search or communicating directly with a source by ema il, text message, virtual communities or other modes of network facilitated comm unication. Since the access to information is now virtually limitless the important skills to develop I suppose are: finding or communicating with information sour ces, analyzing the quality and consistency of information, organizing informatio n, integrating information and sharing information. This approach makes the abil ity to do research and to think critically far more important than acquiring a b ody of knowledge. This also means that the homogeneous approach that is curricul um-based education is replaced by a more heterogeneous vision of what constitute s education. Indeed, the critics of curriculum-based education claim it is more about indoctrination than education. The value of curriculum-based education is that it provides a framework for accessing a body of knowledge. Is it possible, to take a framework approach without defining precisely what the content of courses (i.e. curriculum) should be? The truth about curriculum-based education is that the vast majority of wha t is learned is soon forgotten when a student leaves school. What is remembered i s what is of value to the individual in their everyday lives and their work. Schools need to impart the basic skills, this includes the usual reading , writing, and critical thinking trio. However, as noted above, schools need t o teach the skills on how to do research in the age of information and the more abstract skill of critical thinking. I have broken this process into five skill s as noted above: finding/communicating, analyzing, organizing, integrating and sharing. Evaluating students has traditionally been done using tests. This form of evaluation is usually linked to how well a student has assimilated and under stood the curriculum. If schools were to become less curriculum-centric, how wou ld they evaluate student performance?

Using purely subjective evaluation of students is problematic, since sub jective measures can be biased. We need a new model of education which, while it values information, is skill-centric rather than curriculum-centric. Education should be a life long pursuit. Learning a skill that facilitates self-education would be invaluable for students.