Philosophical Questions about Education; Clip 6 Video Lecture | Philosophy of Education: Introductory Course - Self Help Learning

all right cutting across this issue of
whether we take the world to be
naturalistic or supernatural istic
fundamentally is another kind of
question metaphysically is the world
such that we take it to be a world of
cause and effect is to say that whatever
happens in the world there is an in
principle understandable cause behind it
so that there are cause and effect or
laws or cause and effect principles or
laws of nature or laws of religion that
are operative and if we come to
understand those those laws or those
principles that we can then in principle
come to understand why everything that
happens in the world happens right
everything happens not necessarily for a
reason or reason is a mentalistic right
kind of cause but there is for any
effect a cause that in principle is
intelligible that we through our reason
can figure out if we come to have the
right kind of understanding of the way
the world works that then means that in
the future to the extent that we
understand the causal laws we can make
reasonable predictions about how things
are going to play out and plan our lives
accordingly if that is is true now by
contrast we could also make the argument
or come to the belief that in fact the
world is not something that operates
according to causal principles instead
there's a certain chaos fundamentally
permeates reality they're gonna be
naturalistic versions of the chaos
arguing that ultimately the world is in
deterministic or subject to randomness
and that our best understandings are
always going to be inadequate because of
this built-in randomness in the world or
the chaos can also be in religious and
super naturalistic form if we believe
that God is will and God changes his
mind or that the ordinary processes of
reality that might appear to be causal
can suddenly be interjected or
interrupted rather by it by a miracle
being in trajector into the process and
so in principle there is no way to
understand why things happen they do all
those reasons are known by God alone and
then correspondingly no real way we can
predict the the future because
miracles and various chaotic
interjections are possible so is it the
case that super naturalistic li there's
a cause for everything that occurs or
naturalistically there's cause for
everything that occurs or is the world
fundamentally a chaotic enterprise or
naturalistic war or supernatural istic
reasons now this has educational
implications to the extent that we want
to urge or not urge students to be able
to come to comprehend the world in in
universalistic terms to always push for
an explanation always to have the
explanation that they can plan out the
future of their lives and maybe take
charge of their ultimate destinies all
of that is based on a presupposition
that fundamentally the universe is
causal to the extent that we don't think
the universal is causal we're not going
to make those very important educational
goals instead we're going to see our
lives and the students lives ultimately
as being ruled by chaos and
unpredictability and so the best we will
do is then prepare the student for a
fundamentally chaotic and unpredictable
kind of life all right coming across
these issues as well one more I want to
put on the board here one other kind of
metaphysical issue when we think about
the world as a whole do we think of the
world as a place that is hospitable to
our needs our interests our aspirations
for the world and this position is
called the benevolent universe premise
is it the case that we can see the world
such that if human beings do right
develop themselves their capacities and
so forth they can go forth and find
success right in their chosen realms of
life or is it the case that by contrast
the world and the forces that govern in
the worlds are hostile or inhospitable
to human aspirations and so students
should then be taught a more defensive
posture right with respect to the world