Skip to main content

Knowledge, Learning, and Pragmatism: Reversal of Platonic Certitude of Ideas



Picture's Courtesy: Google Books

I have heard people saying 'be practical'. I often think about this advice and find many puzzling answers: what is practical?

Practicality may be a principle that emphasizes the importance of practice rather than having merely a 'museum of ideas'. The ownership over ideas without practice is as useful as forgetting the art of archery when the enemy is ready to blow the existence, something akin to Karna story in Mahabharata. The question of significance is if practicality can have life without the ideas or ideals? Practicality is, in fact, dependent upon some ideals, which make it practical in the first place. In that sense, the dichotomy of idealism and pragmatism is to be revised in terms of their differences as conceptual categories. 

In American school of thought, Charles Sanders Pierce, William James, and John Dewey developed the thesis of Pragmatism which has gained its popularity in Rorty age (Richard Rorty, one of the last defenders of Pragmatism made it an epochal transformation with his expositions through literary adventures). 

The ancient example of pragmatism could be found in Buddha who neglected many metaphysical questions and focused on the question to liberate humankind from the living reality of dukha (suffering). He raised the practical problems like a person suffering from thirst doesn't contemplate the nature of water rather chooses an existential act to quench the thirst. A person on death bed doesn't value any possession or ownership rather opts to pass away with less pain and suffering. 

Our knowledge is just a culmination of demands and exigencies from which our world passes through. All the conceptual creation doesn't emanate out of nothing. It has grounding in a situation or puzzle which requires an effective solution. All the major discoveries and inventions happened in the world to address some questions or problems. Knowledge has a constitutive element which reflects the creativity of human species as an agent exposed to facticity and desires transcendence (Jean Paul Sartre). It is not just a spectator's approach to observe and discover the law of nature as believed by many metaphysians. Rather humans have got the creative skills from nature to create knowledge under a particular condition or situation in which the personal preferences and biasness remain in the hypothesis one creates and tests through induction of experiences.  

Knowledge and learning for human species are not merely a fancy urge rather these are the existential necessities to foster the values in newcomers and perpetuate the 'will to life' (Arthur Schopenhauer). John Dewey in his Democracy and Education demonstrated the urge of education as a progressive process to instill values in children, so that the culture in which the adult is grown and progressed could be transmitted to a younger one. Education, in that sense, has a pragmatic potential to perpetuate human culture and their institutions in new forms, even though the finite reality is the fact of an individual life.

Pragmatism revises the idea of truth, since the history of the idea has exposed its fallibility and restricts the scope of knowledge to verification and satisfaction of the agent, who is inquiring about the problem. No one can claim its historical standing and spatial validity. The nature of science, though stands on cooperative research and institutionalisation of critical method, cannot provide the indubitable proposition in the Cartesian sense. At least, the history of ideas exposes the harsh reality of this. But science as a particular method has definitely outsmarted the other methods of inquiry, hence its method is often relied on in solving the puzzling issues on which the human community contemplates to find out the solutions. Pragmatism, in this sense, has contributed in making epistemology an activity of action and clarification. It is an ordinary act like 'speech act' (Ludwig Wittgenstein) or political action which has evolved in human species and has helped in making the human community adapting in adverse natural and social conditions.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

पिरोता जाऊँ एक माला ज़िन्दगी का

पढ़ता हूँ हर एक दिन एक ही पन्ना, हर दिन हज़ार ये मालूम पड़ते हैं। जबसे होश संभाला है एक ही पन्ना सवांरते आया हूँ, लोग इसे ज़िन्दगी कहते हैं। इसपे लिखे हर एक लब्ज़ जो मेरे मालूम पड़ते हैं, ना जाने कितने जुबां पे चढ़े होंगे। आज हम भी कुछ पल के लिए ही सही इसके सारथी हैं, जाने से पहले कुछ रंग मेरा भी इसपे चढ़ जाए, बस इसीलिए एक ही पन्ना बार बार पलटता रहता हूँ। हर कोई अनजाने किताब की तलाश में बाहर निकलता है, जिसका हर एक पन्ना वो ख़ुद है। जब ख़ुद के रंग को समझ ही ना पाया, तो भला इंद्रधनुषी किताब के क्या मायने हैं? अस्तित्व में ना जाने कितने पन्ने बिखरे पड़े हैं, बस एक से ही अवगत हो जाऊँ, उसके हर एक शब्द को चुनता जाऊँ, कुछ पल के लिये सही, पिरोता जाऊँ एक माला ज़िन्दगी का।

Time and Love

Time passes by Like moving in a train of thoughts Its sequence is always forward Vibrating like a cosmic dance of Shiva Time is creating and engulfing The little waves of the ocean Going where? Nobody knows Like a dream does not have a destination It is as true as any absurd play With friends of pleasure It moves like speed of light With friends of need It is felt like a moving river Allowing a little moments of thoughts Before everything becomes a history With friends of virtue Time becomes a sublime touch Soothing and healing the pain Becoming a spectator To watch the cries and follies Beauty and ugliness The rainbow of joy And an album of suffering Time touches Yet it remains aloof Like Purush is witnessing The colours of prakriti Yet remains unblemished And untouched The union of two is always mystical Their touch is a source Of creation and transformation Time is witnessing everything In its sequential movements Who is witnessing time? What is independent of the originatio...

Dreamer

Empty is mirror, Yet it reflects what is. Chit is absolute abyss, Yet it contains the existence, Like unending horizons of sky. Chit in bond with manas, Creates and witnesses, The playful dance of life. Shunyata is the absolute truth, Yet it is all of the possible worlds. Out of its voidness, World appears and disappears. Is it real or unreal? Or merely the Dream, Of all the possible dreams? If it is the case, Who is dreaming, the dreams of all? The One, the Cosmos. What if the One is also a figment of imagination? What if the world is a poetic creation? And the Poet has deployed itself, In every form of poetry? The poetry of life. What if only bhokta is bhojan? Only observer is observed? Only worshiper is worshipped? Only subject is object? All are the waves of same Ocean.