The case for critical thought: an investigation into contemporary determinist knowledge, its social effects, and the alternative offered by a 'mode 2' approach to teaching, learning and research.
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Date
2002
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Abstract
This thesis is centrally concerned with the current nee-liberal world order and its effects
upon society. It is concerned to expose the contradictions and weaknesses within the
knowledge systems that underpin our political reality. It considers economics as the
determining discourse of neo-liberal politics, analytic biology as its determining
discourse of individual persons, and analytic and neo-pragmatist philosophy as its leading
systems of thought. In each case it finds a linear rationalism compatible with the
determinist materialism of noo-Darwinism, and indeed explicitly invoking Darwin. This
seems to vindicate Manuel Castells's fmding of this 'Knowledge Society' as driven by
'an abstract, universal instrumentalism'. The thought systems of this economic liberalism
have seen politics subsumed within economics, de-humanising most of the institutions of
the earlier Liberal tradition, to the detriment of both freedom and democracy. But it
disputes Castells's assumption that this is a necessary reality and finds in neo-liberal
education the exception to this dehumanising trend. Revitalised as 'Mode 2' knowledge
production, this form of teaching, learning and research is found to be ideally suited to
challenge the underpinnings of the very social order which initially produced it. The
thesis as a whole is designed to employ Mode 2 methods in order to support this
contention. Using this approach it seeks to demonstrate that in place of neo-Darwinism
the ideas of the South African natural scientist Eugene Marais, concerning the
significance of conscious thought itself within evolution, can provide a more convincing
epistemoloy than the behaviourism and materialism of analytic biology. It finds John
Maynard Keynes's acceptance of economics as a moral and not a natural science, more logically convincing and more inherently useful for social reconstruction than the current
mathematicisation of economic theory. Prevalent philosophical approaches appear to
serve only to reinforce the systems of thought already found (and found wanting) in
politics, biology and economics. But again these philosophies are shown to be vulnerable
to a Mode 2 critique, particularly employing the ontological understanding of the
contemporary pragmatist philosopher Joseph Margolis, whose strong version of
relativism allows for both bivalent and multivalent truth values more appropriate to
understanding the complex realities of ethical and democratic societies.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.
Keywords
Critical thinking., Knowledge, Theory of., Education--Philosophy., Education and state--South Africa., Economics--Philosophy., Determinism (Philosophy), Theses--Philosophy.