PART II. The Place of Reason in Assessing Educational Arguments

• Chapter IV: The Place of Metaphysical Reasons in Education

The view that the metaphysical approach encourages philosophers of education to perpetrate "garrulous absurdities" has recently been voiced more gently than it was by Sidney Hook. Sterling McMurrin maintains that metaphysics is, in principle, irrelevant to education and that it is a mistake to think educational theories 'can and should be derived from metaphysical premises.” This contention (despite some slight modification of the ''absurdity" idea) may be dubbed the "hard-line,'' "tough-minded," or Purist approach, for it is analogous to the Purist use of argument that we have noted. If it is correct, it means elimination in toto of any relation between metaphysics and education. Metaphysical premises, however, are not alone in needing rational assessment. Moral premises are also used to justify educational conclusions, and difficulties occur in deciding the moral ends of living and teaching. Moral premises, as well as metaphysical premises, when opened to pertinent criticism, may offer reasons for deciding what should be taught. 

A metaphysical belief concerns what the world is like. A moral belief concerns how one ought to live. Both aspects of belief seem necessary, together with pertinent facts and pedagogical considerations, to help us decide what should be taught.

• Chapter V: The Place of Moral Reasons in Education

Other conditions for assessing the use of moral arguments in education are undoubtedly needed. In defense of the view that moral reasons do apply to evaluative arguments in education, this study has tried to show how several canons of criticism may be used to assess one conclusion of the form T. The conclusion may come close to being backed by a good enough reason, so that it can rationally be chosen over some alternative conclusion of the form T that is not nearly as well backed by good reasons. 

Evaluative arguments in education may still go on being treated, on the one hand, like "I like peach pie," indiscernibly hortatory, or, on the other hand, like a quest for a philosopher's stone, indiscriminable or inapplicable; neither treatment provides rational canons of criticism suitable to the assessment of evaluative arguments in education. A view that there is no way out of the impasse between Sense I and Sense II, between the Capricious and the Purist, may become buttressed by the notion that there is "'nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

• Chapter VI: The Rebuttal Notion

Although it has been argued here that there are no strict proofs in evaluative arguments, the reader should not be left empty-handed. There is a limited sense in which an evaluative argument, such as that used to answer the question 'What should be taught?", may be rebutted. If an evaluative argument in education is intended to be concluded in Sense II and is then shown not to be concluded in that sense but in a way very much more like Sense I (capriciously), we would have a reason to rebut that use of such an argument. We do not say to Spencer and Mc Gucken, "Stop arguing as to what knowledge is of most worth. We say, "If you intend to use an argument strictly in Sense II, as with an argument purporting to decide what should be taught, and expect a conclusion that is like Sense II, but without mustering up a good enough reason for choosing one conclusion over another, then your argument gives a reason for rebuttal." The absence of a good enough reason for deciding to act on one or another conclusion is a reason to rebut the argument—but only, it should be added, in the limited sense that the argument, which was intended to be concluded in Sense II, has been shown instead to have been concluded on grounds that more nearly resemble Sense I.

An argument is rebuttable when its conclusion seems like an ironclad Sense II but its backing, proving on inspection to be flimsy, actually produces a conclusion more like Sense I. In taking on an aspect for which it has no backing or credentials, this use of argument has undergone an imperceptible shift, which it seemed suitable to call capricious. The use of an argument is to be rebutted, in short, when it appears like Sense II but is really more like Sense I. Even this limited rebuttal notion may show the difference between a flimsy argument, which is more like Sense I, and a cogent argument, which is more nearly like Sense II than Sense I.

The rebuttal of an evaluative argument does not, however, banish all its uses in education, nor does it make an argument that fails at one time to measure up as cogent (backed by a good enough reason) an argument that is forever wrong. The observed absence of a good enough reason does not mean that the deficiency cannot be remedied; it is logically possible for the rebutted conclusion to turn out to be the right one after all, if overriding reasons arise, and this possibility cannot be ignored in evaluative arguments. Good reasons and even reasons that for a time are good enough do not accordingly stamp an argument as conclusive in the same sense as proofs do. (A good enough reason is the halfway station between proof and caprice.)

The rebuttal notion is therefore also limited by the possibility of giving a good enough reason to a conclusion where formerly there was none. Rebuttal constitutes only a form of criticism, and as such it is not infallible. Neither, however, is imperviousness to criticism. Indeed, one earmark of an evaluative argument, for which analogous work was begun by Karl Popper's work on falsification, is that an open evaluative (or philosophical) argument, whether theological, metaphysical, moral, esthetic, or educational, is open to rebuttal. This means that rebuttal conditions accompany a proposed argument in such a way that in the language game of arguing, the rules of that game show what counts as a "checkmate".

• Concluding

One may still ask: "What is a rational argument? Is it one that rules out metaphysical or moral premises?" 

A rational argument need not be one that rules out metaphysical or moral premises. There are too many instances of rigorous arguments with successfully proven conclusions that are exceedingly dull and quite irrelevant to the problems of life; and we probably all know other arguments on tenuous, even shaky premises—hypotheses, principles, Ideas or Forms (as Plato called them)—purporting to answer questions such as, "How ought we to live?" or, "What is the world made of?" that may not successfully answer the questions, but seem to be both interesting and important. Arguments that attempt to answer these questions may for a time appear unsubstantiated, even implausible. Some rigorous arguments may demonstrate extremely trivial conclusions, while some less substantial arguments may provide the flimsiest sort of support for a significant conclusion. 

The hesitation to rule out metaphysical and moral premises in an educational argument may be best explained by emphasizing something said earlier: One cannot be sure that the sort of metaphysical views put forward by Thales, Anaximander, Plato, and the early Greeks may not be ultimately the most important kinds of thoughts in the power of the mind of man to conceive. It should now be added that, for the education of man, it is doubtful that the idea of the Moral Law—with appropriate built-in qualifications—is very much less important. Yet, as premises, neither metaphysical nor moral arguments are capable of certain proof. Other arguments abound that are rigorous and thus rational, but they are also trivial in that they have no appreciable bearing on deciding what one ought to teach—that is, how one ought to teach the young to live. 

In the effort to assess what counts as a rational argument in education, therefore, metaphysical and moral premises have not all been ruled in, nor have they all been ruled out. Instead, the attempt in this study has been to do two things: to apply rational canons of criticism toward assessing metaphysical and moral arguments in education; and, in this connection, to stress maximum criticizability of unsatisfactory metaphysical and moral implications. As J. W. N. Watkins suggests, this activity seems allied with doing the critical part of philosophy; the synoptic or visionary part, perhaps the more precious and difficult to come by, remains largely and regrettably untouched here. 

The job of clearing the ground a little does not permit the luxury of constructing an airtight proof, or of judging either a metaphysical or moral argument in education once and for all. The job of quarrying for a cogent evaluative argument in education is intended to provide us with the power to criticize and assess what ought to be taught, with a view to preventing some harm that might otherwise be done.