Dewey, Jaspers, Education, and Judo
Ispent a good part of my life learning, doing, and teaching Judo and submission grappling. I retired 2 years ago (though I am not old, I wanted to move on) and a sizeable chunk of the information I learned is gone. I achieved the rank of Nidan (second-degree black belt) and ran a pretty successful program that has since done even better after having passed it on. After I retired, some of my knowledge is still there, like riding a bike, some aspects are going to remain. Yet, as I said, a good chunk has left the building. This can be insightful as to how higher education works.
John Dewey is a well-known pragmatist philosopher. Pragmatism says that truth is contingent on achieving some result. He says:
“If a scientific man be asked what is truth, he will reply — if he frame his reply in terms of his practice and not of some convention — that which is accepted upon adequate evidence. And if he is asked for a description of adequacy of evidence, he certainly will refer to matters of observation and experiment. It is not the self-inclosed character of the terms and propositions nor their systematic ordering which settles the case for him; it is the way they were obtained and what he can do with them in getting other things.”
— John Dewey (1916), “Essays in Experimental Logic”
In this excerpt, Dewey highlights his philosophy of education. His educational theory is known as progressivism. Instead of imparting information and testing the retention of that information for the short term, Dewey believed that education was best done by problem-solving. He has made a big impact with this view. Education, for Dewey, requires a “community of inquirers.”
This reminds me of one of my favorite philosophers — Karl Jaspers. Jaspers’ 1941 work “On My Philosophy,” has a lot to say about metaphilosophy — the philosophy of philosophy. He concluded that other philosophers are “companions-in-thought.” They act as signposts toward our own personal understanding. It is through education from one another that we come to conclusions.
This has similarities to Judo; my students did not become parrots of what I taught. They made modifications that seemed to work better for them in the long run. Everything has a counter, but sometimes some things or small changes do work better for someone else. I encouraged this, at least if it was working. Sometimes I would take pointers from them as well when they found something I wasn’t aware of. Easy counters to a complex move made the complex move not worth the payoff, for example. We learned together, even if I “ran things.” This is progress or innovation.
The knowledge and skills we learned together do wear off without polishing though. We call it “rust” when people come back to judo after taking a lot of time off. While I am very very blessed by my philosophical education at Minnesota State University Moorhead as well as Arizona State University, I will admit that standard educational convention is problematic. Things get forgotten but are treated as permanent in the university setting. I envision an education that is like martial arts: things get engrained by repetition and practice. Continuously honed if you will. Some classes get revisited, and topics get re-covered. The education is continuous and you don’t ever “complete” your education. I don’t like the idea of a college degree being associated with “done” or “complete.” That is never the case in Judo, your knowledge can wane on a subject. One’s credentials should be valued by how long they have continued their education in a provable, and credible means. That holds more weight than the amount of information they once held and no longer have any, or hardly any, recollection of. One’s level of competency is clear by the work they put forward, not by the degree they hold. In philosophy, this includes, but is not limited to academic courtesy, use of inferential forms and logic, understanding of the ideas of others and the canon, and clearly and interestingly presenting ideas, among other things. As such, my argument in extraction would look something like this:
(1) Competency is gained by obtaining and retaining a certain set of skills and knowledge. (Basic)
(2) Obtaining and retaining a certain set of skills and knowledge is gained by continuous and rigorous honing and innovation, not by the completion of a curriculum once around. (Basic)
(3) Therefore, competency is gained by continuous and rigorous honing and innovation, not by the completion of a curriculum once around. (Categorical Syllogism 1, 2)
To be clear, I am not saying that college is a waste. There is a lot there to be had. I am also willing to give that if someone has a degree in a certain field, they are more likely to have a better understanding of that field than someone without that degree. What I am against is considering it as a point of completion. As if that competency is permanent. In over half of the classes I take, even in philosophy, much is lost when I move on to the next class. Reduced to usually about 2 or 3 major arguments per semester. In Judo, I remembered the smallest details by repetition and coming back to old topics. Philosophy should be the same way. For example, I have taken Shelley Kagan’s class “Death” through Open Yale Courses many times. It is one of my favorite classes. As a result, I am refreshing my memory and retaining more and more details.
I have been banging around an idea lately, so please excuse the incoming navel-gazing. It is important to practice what you preach, and in this case, it means doing philosophy like I did Judo. I have a certain set of skills in finding rigorous, and credible resources for philosophical education that I rely on to continue my education. I would like to start a “community of inquirers” as Dewey might say or form a community for “companions in thought” as Jaspers might. I aspire to start an institute where we learn philosophy together using these resources. Almost acting as a philosophical book club (though it will revolve around philosophy class lectures from universities) where we will learn the information, and discuss each lecture together. This allows us to practice philosophy via the use of reflection discussion posts — a common means of practicing philosophy in university classes. I can do this thanks to having a small, but growing community of over 3000 followers. I hope that when I announce this more formally, or rather, if I do, there will be a good portion of people wanting to join in the life-long learning process.
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Other than following me here on Medium, I run a Facebook page Five Minute Philosophy. I also run a TikTok page, phil.the.osopher where I try to do mini-lecture series for educational purposes. You can also find my academic manuscripts on PhilPapers.
