Toolism

Ah yes, today I gave my little talk on 'East and West: The Problems of Knowledge and Inquiry'. It was fascinating to realise that almost every single teacher there was a humanities teacher. It's as if the local system has spasmed and decided that math and science teachers don't have problems with knowledge and inquiry. It used to be the same thing in the local university: science majors weren't normally offered the Philosophy 101: Introduction to Logic course.

In my experience science, math and engineering majors need a lot more of that sort of thing. It's because many of them are very good at limited rule-sets and closed (well pseudo-closed) logic systems, but very bad at figuring them out in human terms. A lot of the problems of philosophical logic are human problems — problems of problem identification, problem definition, problem expression.

I hate simplifying stuff for students unless I can tell them, "This is the simplest I want to make it for you; it is much more complex than that and if you want a good map of reality, WORK FOR IT YOURSELF!"

Give them the tools, let them make art. And if it doesn't work, it's not your fault. But give them good tools, useful tools, interesting tools.