Tag: Possibility

Art of Inquiry, Chapter 2: Iterations

Andrew Taggart

Excerpt from The Art of Inquiry, Chapter 2.

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2.3. Iterations

Let’s turn to the second claim about ignorance. Recall:

2. I don’t really know what a suitable answer would be or, quite possibly, would look like (insight into ignorance);

What does it mean to ‘not really know’ what a suitable answer would be? In some cases, we may be rendered speechless but in most we will advance answers that either (1) used to make sense but no longer do or (2) strike us as immediately implausible. Doubtless, what will happen will be that we run through a set of possible answers and find each answer insufficient. It is as if we were to say, “No, that’s not it” or “That is, at best, only a part of it.” We run through these answers, are dissatisfied with each and with certain combinations, and soon run out of answers.

To say, therefore, that ‘I don’t really know’ is to say that I have no good answers ready to hand and I’m at a loss concerning what to do or how to go on.

2.4. Confronting our Thinking in General

We’ve been discussing the character of confusion as well as what confusion feels like. It’s time, in this section, to turn our attention to how we arrive at confusion in the first place. Most of our lives are not spent in confusion and very few questions have the power to stir us, carrying us into a state of confusion. If we are in confusion, we may inquire how we got here. In addition, we will want to consider why confusion may, at certain periods in our lives and during certain stages of our work, be desirable.

Let’s remind ourselves of the thought that we are basically committed to something or other of ultimate importance. What would it mean to bring this basic commitment before us, to bring it into question? It might be to experience a ‘’confrontation with our thinking in its entirety.’ A good philosophical inquiry may confront us with the most basic claims about our way of living. When this happens, i.e., when we are confronted with our thinking in general, we recognize that the possibility of our returning to an old way of thinking impossible but no new path is, as yet, foreseeable. We may desire to turn back, may be so tempted, but we have an intimation that that way is foreclosed. We long to move forward quickly but no light shines on a path.

What now, we may ask.

2.5. From Actuality to Possibilities

The first moment, a confrontation with our thinking in general, leads us to a second moment, a realization that the old way is foreclosed. The third moment is the leading onto a ‘space of possibilities.’ That is to say, we make the transition from a ‘space of actuality’ concerning how things have to be into a space in which novel possibilities are revealed to us. My life in this organization, not having to head one way anymore, might now head in any number of fruitful (or unfruitful) directions. In this instant, there is exhilaration as well as caution, bewilderment as well as curiosity.

2.6. Bewilderment, Redux

To be continued…

Confronting our thinking in general

Andrew Taggart1 Comment

I want to say that the focus of my life is on teaching the art of inquiry. Yesterday, I said that one of the aims of a good inquiry is to disabuse us of our ignorance. To be humbled in this manner is to enter into a time of exceptional confusion. Can anything interesting be said of this state of confusion?

For starters, the kind of confusion I have in mind needs to be understood in its fullness. It is not the confusion of not knowing whether the train is running on a particular track or on time; whether my friend and I are meeting at the right place or time; whether there are closer to 8 million or 9 million people living in New York City; whether one dinner item should be put into the oven before or after another. Presumably, all these matters, which have to do with getting a state of affairs right or with following the proper sequence in order to arrive at the desired end, could be cleared up by verifying, by confirming, by consulting, or by referring to some authoritative manual. The ‘places we go to look’ in order to alleviate our bewilderment seem ‘on hand’ or ‘nearby’; clarity is a matter of course.

The state of confusion I mean to examine, then, seems to follow from a ‘confrontation with our thinking in its entirety.’ ‘Confronting our thinking’ is a phrase that came up during a conversation I had recently with Dutch education reformer Ed Weijers in reference to the work of the French philosophical practitioner Oscar Brenifier (whose work, admittedly, I’m not familiar with). I would say that this confrontation with my way of thinking in general renders the possibility of my returning to an old way of thinking impossible. I may desire to turn back, may be so tempted, but I have an intimation that that way is no foreclosed.

What now, we ask.

The first moment, a confrontation with our thinking in general, leads us to a second moment, a realization that the old way is foreclosed. The third moment is the leading on to a ‘space of possibilities.’ That is to say, we make the transition from a ‘space of actuality’ concerning how things have to be into a space in which novel possibilities are revealed to us. My life in this organization, not having to head one way anymore, might now head in any number of fruitful (or unfruitful) directions. In this instant, there is exhilaration as well as caution.

The temptation for any person or organization is to think, e.g., that this five-year plan was no good but that some other five-year plan would be more workable. Surely, if not this, then some other, no? At this point in the inquiry, we smile, recognizing that we not need some better five-year plan. Far wiser to have no five-year plan. In doing so, we welcome a time of life when exploring possibilities becomes vital, joyful, giddy.

On resilience and postulates

Andrew Taggart

Living by making postulates has helped me, even in the darker moments, not to fall into despair. Individuals in failing marriages despair that their lives could go otherwise. Institutions in free fall have lost the capacity to wonder whether they could be organized in some other, more robust fashion.

Despair marks a defect in logic and imagination. In The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant offers that the scientist who wishes to investigate nature must postulate that it is organized in a such and such a way despite the fact that he does not know (yet) whether it is organized in such and such a way. The logical point seems to be that in order to inquire seriously we must first posit some hitherto unknown possibility that is as good as, if not better than the reality we are living through. Do we have reason to think that there is some better embodiable possibility? Certainly not if we draw our reasons only from the fund of past experience, history, and the current evidence of the senses. Certainly yes if we dare to imagine that there must be something, if only we look in the right way.

Accordingly, a postulate is inquiry-guiding yet, importantly and as the inquiry gets underway, it does not run contrary to the mounting evidence. A postulate thus dares us to think seriously even while it cautions us to keep our eyes on the evidence of the senses. It provides us with two kinds of ‘looks’: the well beyond and the right here.

It is fashionable today in social entrepreneurship circles to speak about resilience. What, it is asked, is involved in a system’s being resilient in the face of change and uncertainty? Or–to change the scale–what explains why one person can sail through the end of a marriage while another is brought low and is inconsolable unto death? Is it constitution or general temperament? Possibly. Luck (tuche)? Quite possibly. But it could also be that one has cultivated his imagination and a lived logic and, by means of both, has become adept at formulating postulates. Even though he does not know that a new life is possible, he sets his course according to the ‘must’–and then feels his way through to the end, wherever the path should take him.