Abstract
This chapter describes a fundamental structure of ‘education’ as a process of reduction and pruning. A brain-mind is born with infinite potential, yet concrete experience bound by the contingency of time, place, and ‘society’ prunes it from universality to particularity. The chapter develops this based on two movements, which are grounded in the matrix of mind: First, we explore and define two senses of identity I and me, based on mindful attention, psychology, and phenomenology. Second, we define ‘society’ as a BIG mind and locate the individual mind within it. We establish the mind-fundamental WE that enables communication, ‘education’, and the formation of all ‘societies’ based on narrative. ‘Education’ as pruning results as a movement from a universal I-WE to a contingent me-’society’.
Who is that ‘someone’ that ‘education’ attempts to change, and whom is it that changes her/him/it?
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
In effect James (2007) split the me-self into three: material, social, & spiritual.
- 3.
In this chapter I connotes with the contemplative I and not with the reflective I. Both are developed in Chapter 9.
- 4.
This dual conception of the ‘self’ is becoming grounded in neuroscience. This begins with a coarse left/right hemisphere dichotomy that is too colloquially understood these days yet some accounts depict it with great rigor (McGilchrist 2009). It continues with more elaborate distinctions that clearly demarcate brain regions/networks associated with language, interpretation, mind-wandering, and the ‘narrative self’ (e.g., medial regions, default mode network) as opposed to regions that are involved in non-conceptual primary perception (e.g., higher level regulatory regions, insula). (See, Ataria et al. 2015; Berkovich-Ohana and Glicksohn 2014).
- 5.
This includes the medial temporal lobe, areas of the hippocampus, prefrontal regions of the brain, orbitofrontal cortex (Siegel 2012, p. 70).
- 6.
See Searle (2015) for a far more nuanced description.
- 7.
Saxe and Baron-Cohen (2007).
- 8.
In neuroscientific and psychological terms all brain networks with which we are born, which provide us with the capacity to communicate and develop relationships, might be considered as the ‘hardware’ behind this WE.
- 9.
This can be linked to Marx’s ‘superstructure’ and ‘base’, but there are some differences that I will not explore here.
- 10.
The other reason that this is unsurprising is that, I just laid the matrix of mind over ‘society’, and surprise, surprise ‘society’ fit to it like a glove. Frameworks of inquiry tend to define their end product.
- 11.
It may very well have a BIG core ‘self’ but we will not develop this here.
- 12.
Berkovich-Ohana and Glicksohn (2014).
- 13.
As usual James will be the person to say it better: “Where the body is is ‘here’; when the body acts is ‘now’; what the body touches is ‘this’; all other things are ‘there’ and ‘then’ and ‘that’.” (James 1976, p. 33).
- 14.
In McGilchrist’s (2009) analysis the shift from the I to me is associated with the left-brain’s gradual takeover of the right-brain. Research shows the first years’ primacy of right-brain activity gradually yielding to the left-brain that is characterized by the experience of conceptualizing the world, and making use of it.
- 15.
To be sure, however, I, WE, me, ‘society’, are all fundamentals of mind. The former two are universal the latter two particular.
- 16.
Science now tells us that genetics and environment work in tandem every step of the way, so genes do not sabotage this argument (Kaufer and Francis 2011).
- 17.
What I refer to as the illusion of omniscience is described by Daniel Kahneman (2011) as the feature of our intuitive, non-controlled process of perception (which is the functioning of ‘system 1‘). It yields the naive disposition that he calls WYSIATI: “what you see is all there is”.
- 18.
I do not develop this here but rest assured that ‘society a’ vs. ‘society b’ is but an expression of the same problem yet in an extended form, as WE becomes the center/periphery and my ‘society’ becomes righter than yours.
- 19.
I am fully willing to accept Witgensttein’s (1953) conception of ‘language games’ in this respect, rather than suggest that there is a clearly articulated meaning to the word ‘word’. This does not affect the argument in any way.
- 20.
This grim description reverberates through diverse perspective such as, Weber’s prophecy of the ‘iron-cage’ in which rationalization and bureaucratization take over charisma; McGilchrist’s (2009) depiction of the brain’s left hemisphere’s takeover of the right hemisphere as a gradual process that has accelerated during the Enlightenment and modernity, and Turkle’s (2012) analysis of technology’s taking over our capacity for caring for each other.
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Ergas, O. (2017). ‘Education’ and the Pruning of the Mind. In: Reconstructing 'Education' through Mindful Attention. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58782-4_3
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