Читать книгу Educational Explanations - Christopher Winch - Страница 9

In Chapter 2, we will address the most fundamental issues at stake in the enterprise, namely whether it makes sense to talk of educational reality and the closely associated question as to whether there are truths about educational practices and whether we can know them? In order to get clearer about what is at stake, it is helpful to distinguish between perception-independent reality and conception-dependent reality (e.g. McNaughton 1988). We presuppose a world which continues whether or not we are aware of it and indeed whether or not we have the sensory or cognitive ability to be aware of or to understand it.² Even if our ‘knowing our way around’ in such a world makes certain aspects of it rather than others salient to us as human beings with particular interests, needs and abilities, that does not alter the independence of that world from us in most, if not all, respects.³

As creatures with conceptual cognitive equipment (e.g. the ability to make judgements – Geach 1957), we relate to the world through our conceptual as well as our sensory abilities. However, some features of our world cannot intelligibly be considered except as in some sense products of our conceptual abilities. These include the practices, customs and institutions of our societies. Were we not to conceive of these in certain ways (i.e. to have practices of judgement and action associated with them), it would not make sense to say that there were such practices, customs and institutions. They constitute a social reality which is conception dependent. This social reality is the one that we make for ourselves through our practices of judgement within which we employ the concepts that constitute our understanding of our world. Naturally, we also see the non-social world conceptually as well and it is intimately related to our social world. However, while it might exist without us, our social reality is constituted by our conceptual abilities exercised in everyday social practices.