Tracy Bowell

Virtue and Inquiry: Bridging the Transfer Gap

When the benefits of tertiary education are listed, the development of critical thinking is often near the top of the list (Bok 2006). The critical thinker can, among other things, assess evidence, judge the relevance of new information to existing beliefs, and break down a complex problem into less complex parts and work through them in an orderly way. Abilities like these are useful in myriad contexts beyond the classroom. It is easy to see why critical thinking is seized upon as an important part of higher education’s contribution to transforming students into lifelong learners.

Changing the World One Premise at a Time: Argument, Imagination and Post-truth

In this essay, I address the challenges to good argumentation and reasoning posed by the post-truth order, and argue that there is an acute need for argumentation theory to re-present ways in which emotion and reason work together to form, scrutinise and revise deeply held beliefs. I begin by considering deeply held beliefs, discussing the types of beliefs that tend to be deeply held and the ways in which they are acquired. Focussing on deeply held beliefs that are relevant to our sociopolitical imaginaries, beliefs that are prone to prejudice, bias and stereotyping associated with gender, race, sexuality, disability, class and other markers of difference and marginalisation, I consider the ways deeply held beliefs play a framework role in reinforcing our ways of being within the world. With inspiration from Moira Gatens’ and Genevieve Lloyd’s Spinozistic take on the role of the imagination in changing our ways of being, as well as from Iris Marion Young’s work on asymmetrical reciprocity, in what follows I will discuss approaches to critical thinking that involve showing rather than stating alternatives to deeply held beliefs. In particular, I will focus on those involving narratives that provide alternative pictures and make epistemic use of lived experiences to shift and transform our imaginations by offering insights into the lives of others. I argue that such approaches offer more effective means of opening deeply held beliefs up to critical scrutiny and possible revision than approaches that seek simply to state the truth of contrary beliefs.

On engaging with others: A Wittgensteinian approach to (some) problems with deeply held beliefs

Abstract My starting point for this paper is a problem in critical thinking pedagogy—the difficult of bringing students to a point where they are able, and motivated, critically to evaluate their own deeply held beliefs. I first interrogate the very idea of a deeply held belief, drawing upon Wittgenstein’s idea of a framework belief—a belief that forms part of a ‘scaffolding’ for our thoughts—or of a belief that functions as a hinge around which other beliefs pivot. I then examine the role of deeply held beliefs, thus conceived, in our ways of being in the world, exploring the extent to which engagement with others whose deeply held beliefs differ from ours may be possible through imaginative ‘travel’. Finally, I reflect upon the extent to which these imaginative moments also offer up opportunities for critical reflection upon our own deeply held beliefs and, thus, the possibility of changing or adapting those beliefs.

Wittgenstein on Teaching and Learning the Rules: Taking Him at His Word

In this paper, I reflect upon Wittgenstein’s descriptions of how rules are learned and taught. As background I begin with a discussion of the conceptual connection Wittgenstein makes between words’ meaning and their use or application. I extend this discussion to an account of rules as practices, habits, customs and of the way in which becoming ac-custom-ed to following those rules amounts to nothing more, and nothing less, than learning how to act correctly. Here I provide an account of what, by Wittgenstein’s lights, we are learning and being taught as we (be)come into our ways of being in the world and with others. I then move to an examination of what Wittgenstein says about teaching , learning and educating, paying particular attention to the German terms he uses to express his observations and to any nuances of difference between those terms. In this exercise of taking Wittgenstein at his word(s), I attempt to see the role that each of these types of learning and teaching might play in the process of our Bildung , the process of self-formation that constitutes our (be)coming into the ways of being in the world and with others that become second nature to us.