Just the questions, ma’am
And, not for the first time, there’s Howard Gardner.
‘In his new book Five Minds for the Future, he argues that the 21st century will belong to people who can think in certain ways.’ One of the five is ‘the respectful mind, which shows an appreciation of different cultures.’ Why is that called the respectful mind? Why isn’t it called the appreciative mind? Or why isn’t the explanatory phrase ‘which shows respect for different cultures’? (Because minds can’t show things, for one reason. Okay but besides that.) I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that it’s because unconditional respect for (undefined, unspecified) different cultures is slowly but steadily being made mandatory. Which is stupid, in a way – if it’s mandatory, it’s not really respect, is it, it’s just obedience or obeisance or slavishness. Extorted or required respect isn’t respect. It’s also not a kind of mind. It may be an idea or a way of behaving, but it’s not a mind.
Gardner believes that the education policies of today, which still revere rote-learning, are preparing children for the world of yesterday. He points to my digital recorder, the size of a cigarette lighter: “Something that small can contain every fact that you ever need to know. So what a waste of time it is to sit around learning facts! All the premium in the future is for people who can do things that machines can’t do yet. So, the capacity to ask a good question, rather than getting the right answer from a machine, becomes so much more important.”
Really. How can people ask good questions if they don’t know anything? What can their good questions be about? How can they even dig facts out of ‘machines’ if they don’t know anything?
pablum. Complete and utter pablum.
Especially since “the machines” are often full of bunk-if you don’t know anything, how can you discriminate between the “facts” found on a Breatharian website and a nutritionists’ encyclopedia entry?
“if it’s mandatory, it’s not really respect, is it, it’s just obedience or obeisance or slavishness.”
This is not obviously true to me. Kantian respect for each and every human is demanded of us – I don’t think it follows that it’s not really respect.
That being said, I see good reasons to respect individuals in this way, but no reasons at all to give such a priori respect to cultures. Culture is the kind of thing that needs to deserve respect – it doesn’t get it simply by being a culture.
Well, tea, and if you’re ordered to give cultures respect, do you think that whatever attitude you come up with in response is respect? Even assuming you do your best to obey – is the resulting attitude really respect? I can see that it could be something like tolerance or forebearance or a firm intention to behave in a respectful way – but will the attitude itself be genuine respect? That seems unlikely to me. Why? Because it’s internal, I suppose; because it’s subjective; that’s part of the meaning of the word. All attitudinal words are like that, aren’t they? They’re not amenable to command. We can’t hate or like or admire or respect or love people just on commmand. We can play at it, but we can’t really do it.
It comes up again and again, this thinking without facts. What do you think about? It’s like telling people they can eat without food. They can make chewing movements but they won’t get any nourishment from it.
It seems to me that Gardner’s position is incoherent (or, at least, self-contradictory). He says with reference to a digital recorder: “So what a waste of time it is to sit around learning facts!” Let’s leave aside the straw man element here (where is there anyone who advocates “sitting around learning facts”?), and deal with the implied lesser importance of facts compared with “the capacity to ask a good question”.
One of his crucial “minds” is the “disciplined mind”, described by the interviewer as one schooled in basic subjects such as history, science and art but, crucially, a master of one profession, vocation or craft. Perhaps Gardner would like to explain how he thinks someone can become schooled in basic subjects in history, science and art, let alone a *master* of one profession, without accumulating a solid body of factual information.
I suspect that Gardner doesn’t, in his heart of hearts, really believe that stuff he said in relation to the digital recorder. It’s just that it is bien pensant conventional wisdom, so he utters this kind of thing with his brain in automatic mode.
OB, I absolutely agree with you when it comes to explicit orders to respect something (and I especially agree when the talk is about cultures, not individuals). The attitude of respect is simply not something you can produce by demand.
That being said, I don’t think it’s obviously misguided to think of certain attitudes as being demanded of us in a moral sense. “Spouses ought to care about each other” comes to mind. Or “You ought not to think of women as inferior to men.”
Excellent point about the disciplined mind. I genuinely wonder how Gardner reconciles the two thoughts. I could ask him – but I doubt he would answer…
tea, yes, but my point was to distinguish between demand and ought – which you run together there. I agree that the two oughts you give are reasonable, but saying ‘you ought to’ is not quite demanding. My point in the post was that respect ‘is slowly but steadily being made mandatory.’ That’s somewhat polemical, and could be wrong, but the idea is precisely about closing that gap between ought and must.
Another aspect (this interests me; I’m not sure if it will anyone else) is that I might say ‘You ought not to think of women as inferior to men’ but I would never say ‘You ought to respect women’ – for just this kind of reason; it seems to me an absurd kind of demand or even ought. So I think minimal demands or oughts are less demanding or coercive than maximal ones. One attitudinal demand that I think is reasonable, or not unreasonable, is ‘You must love your children.’ That can be seen as a plain responsibility, I think. But beyond that – making strong affirmative emotions a requirement seems to me to be a requirement too many.
I’m kind of allergic to it – that’s what it is. It’s just way too intrusive. People ordering us to love or respect everyone sight unseen – it’s as if the whole world is trying to move into our heads and set up housekeeping there. Our actions and behavior are one thing, but our emotions and attitudes belong to us. Maybe that’s where I turn into an absolutist libertarian.
I think the question of either respecting or not respecting cultures is a bit ill-put. Cultures are way too complex to be subject to “respect”. “Respecting” different cultures of course all too easily becomes a reason to downplay less-than-savoury individual cultural practices (which is what respect or disrespect is properly directed to). However, to state, as the late Pim Fortuyn did, that “Islam is an inferior culture” is hideously confused on its own count (and quite amazing, coming from a sociology Ph.D.).
I can see good reasons for respecting other people (within certain parameters) and other ideas (within certain parameters) but I don’t think it amounts to a moral issue. Being boorish is not a question of morality. As for the “respecting ideas” issue, which perennially props up here, it is important, rationally, to allow for the possibility that a reasonable and intelligent person can hold a belief opposite to ours. Without that attitude, one risks falling into a “truth vs. ridiculous nonsense” dichotomy which is inimical to critical reflection. But again, within certain parameters. There are ideas so “basic” to “decent” people (i.e. the undesirability of genocide, the basic equality between races) that their negation need not be respected.
OB: I’m not sure whether “You must love your children” can be regarded as a moral requirement – especially if it demands an internal state, rather than certain behaviour. There are parents, I believe, who simply do not love their children and cannot bring themselves to do so and are in quite a lot of distress because of that. Awful as this is for the children, I do not think one can morally demand love where there is none.
Tea,
unless my currently drunken mind is mistaken, Kantian respect only demands that we accept people as ends in themselves, not as means. It does not demand that we respect everything and anything a person says or does.
Mr Stalin? Mr P. Pot? The kid who used to beat me up regularly at school? Sorry, no respect there.
“it is important, rationally, to allow for the possibility that a reasonable and intelligent person can hold a belief opposite to ours”
Of course it is, but that’s not respect. Respect means a great deal more than that; that’s why demanding it is coercive.
BJN,
Kantian idea of respect is notoriously complicated, since by respect it actually seems to apply more to actions than to attitudes (really, it applies to a combination of both). The point, it seems to me, is that we should think of people as valuable in a certain sense (i.e., not as mere means) even when they seem unworthy of what we usually mean by respect. Stalin is thus unworthy of what we standardly mean by respect, but we should still respect him in certain ways (not torture him for fun, not use him for research in the same ways we use some animals, etc.) simply because he’s a rational, reflective being.
My point was that I think this applies to people, but not to cultures. Which is why I agree with OB’s general point in this post, but also wanted to point out that it’s not that obvious that certain forms of respect shouldn’t be demanded of us. And it seems to boil down to clarifying what we mean by respect in different contexts.
This might help make my point clearer: I believe that people are intrinsically valuable, while cultures are not. An intrinsic value demands certain types of conduct, and also morally “demands” (i.e., creates oughts with respect to) certain types of attitudes.
Which is why we ought to respect people (in a Kantian sense), but not cultures.
Hi Tea,
even now sober it wasn’t clear to me in your original post the point you were trying to make. Thanks for the clarification. I’m pretty much in agreement.
b
I really need to take a class in articulating more clearly what’s in my head :(
Glad you did understand what I’m trying to say in the end, though.
tea,
You do articulate clearly!
I see what you mean now; it’s just that I wouldn’t call that ‘respect’ – maybe, actually, simply because the word has been hijacked lately for various suspect purposes. A minimal understanding of the word fits perfectly well what you’re saying, but I think I wouldn’t use it because of the risk that people would understand it in a maximal sense. The word has been rendered useless or tricky lately because of all this inflationary rhetoric around it.