philosophy and life consciousness

1. PHILOSOPHY, EDUCATION 5.0,CRITICAL
CONSCIOUSNESS & LIFE SKILLS
A relationship
Prof N. Makuvaza

2. CONTEXT
• A critique of Education 3.0
• Replaced by Education 5.0
• Innovation & industrialisation
• Goods and services
• Critical consciousness in learners
• Provision of Life Skills to learners

3. INTRODUCTION
• What is Philosophy
• What has Philosophy got to do with my studies
• What has Philosophy got to do with Science, Agriculture, Engineering, Law,
Art, Music, History, etc etc
• What has Philosophy got to do with Critical Consciousness & Life Skills

4. Misconceptions about Philosophy
• Irrelevant in general and to my studies in particular
• Uninteresting
• Abstract and esoteric

5. Thesis/Argument
• Not an irrelevant subject
• Every academic subject or pursuit depends /draws from Philosophy
• Every human activity is informed by Philosophy
• Everyone is a philosopher but some are Philosophers
• CC draws from Philosophy in more ways than one

6. Assumptions
• Most of you have never studied Philosophy before
• Most of you have wrong stories about Philosophy

7. The nature of Philosophy
Etymology
• two Greek words philein, meaning ‘to love’ and sophia meaning ‘wisdom’(
Velasquez & Barry, 1988 ; Bennaars et. Al , 1994, Christian, 2006).

8. Historical Context
• Originated from the desire by man to seek an explanation and cause to reality and
being
• Thus, traditionally all explanations were theocentric
• Everything was attributed to supernatural causes, e.g the gods or God
• Greek names such as Thales, Parmenides, Protagoras and Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato
and Aristotle
• However, Protagoras is considered as the first to have coined the word ‘philosophy’
to this study

9. • these being regarded as the earliest and greatest pre – and post - Socratic
philosophers respectively.
• These were puzzled by the nature and origin of the world
• However, their incredulity was later answered by science and their puzzlement
shifted to other issues
• In modern times we have names such as Dewey, Descartes, Russell, Pestalloz,
Nyerere, Ramose, Rousseau, Samkange & Samkange, etc.,
• Concerned about issues such as education, politics, morality, governance etc

10. Meanings of philosophy
From the above we present the following as constituting the enterprise of philosophy:
• Chamber’s Twentieth Century Dictionary defined ‘philosophy’ as pursuit of knowledge
and wisdom.
• The mother of all knowledge- all other subjects developed from philosophy)
• A 'thirst for learning, 'thirst for knowledge', a lover of learning".
• Philosophy is a yearning for knowledge
• An insatiable search/thirst for knowledge
• Put in simple idiom philosophy can be understood as the love of /search &quest for
knowledge and wisdom and truth

11. • A philosopher therefore is a lover of knowledge
• The objective being to become wise
Essentially, philosophy
• is critical thinking about thinking, the proximate goal of which is to
get in touch with the truth about reality; the ultimate goal being to see
the Big picture (Christian, 2006;xxii)

12. The idea of a Big Picture & Connectedness
The African Context
• We are all one
• Philosophy of unhu/Ubuntu
• Humaneness/humanity
• Connectedness in social relations
• Oneness overrides artificial differences and focuses on essences
• Knowledge is One
• Knowledge vs KNOWLEDGE

13. How Philosophy arrives at knowledge and
truth: The place of questions
In philosophy one learns
• To ask questions and re-ask questions
• To double-check fact claims in order to verify or falsify them
• To reject fallacious fact claims no matter how sound they may appear and
from whomever
• Not to accept everything at face value
• To question and doubt everything

14. • It is a thinking, pondering,wondering engagement with reality
• It is an invitation to question the unquestioned in order to get the full picture
• Seeks to go beyond appearances to reality
• to speculate, reason and even to fantasize in the eternal search for knowledge and wisdom
• It is a do-it-yourself enterprise
• It is a second order activity as opposed to the sciences which are first order activities
• Specifically it is a skill which one has to learn

15. Remarks on questions & their relevance
• Speculative & contemplative
• Requires one to think seriously
• Various academic disciplines have questions related to them
• In our various subjects we should learn to question
• The only way to get knowledge and truth
• In life people should learn to question in order to get knowledge and the
truth

16. Perspectives of Conceptualizing
Philosophy/Philosophising
Philosophy/Philosophising can be conceptualised from two perspectives
namely;
1) Commonsensical/Simplisitic/Layman’s view(Low-order)
2) Professional/Academic Sense (High-order)

17. Commonsensical/Simplistic/Layman’s view/Low-order
• One’s view of life
These are anchored on:
• Inherited Beliefs
• Traditions
• Practices
• Perceptions
• Sensibilities

18. • Attitudes
• Slogans e.g Indigenisation, Economic Empowerment
• Mottos of schools
N/B
These are unquestioned, unjustified, unrationalised
• People just take them as the truth
• Subsequently come to hold them as their own

19. Characteristics
• Its not that they do not get bewildered or wonder about their reality
• They do but they may not think critically or care about it
• Such people are participators and not actors
• Such people see but they are not capable of noticing
• think but they do not Think
• They are not capable of asking WHY?
Reasons why they don’t ask: religious, cultural ,political
NB: can be applied to life: people ordinarily live order lives
• Have low order knowledge of issues eg ikss

20. • We present this as a ‘low – order’ level order of philosophising
• Thus, it can be argued that to some extent, everyone is a philosopher and has a philosophy.
• Ironically, people are engaged in philosophy and philosophising every day of their lives, consciously or
unconsciously.
• However, this level is simplistic and low-order because people are not conscious that they are engaging in
philosophy and philosophising
• This is on the basis that they may ask questions but may not bother to ask why?
• Conclusively therefore;, everyone is a ‘philosopher’ and can ‘philosophise’ precisely because
everyone ‘thirsts / yearns’ for knowledge at one time or another as everyone questions at one time
or another.
• From this perspective everyone has a philosophy

21. Professional/Academic Sense
Higher-order level
• Philosophy as an academic discipline
• By an academic discipline in this discussion is meant a “distinct way of acquiring knowledge or of
comprehending objects of cognition” (Bennaars, et. Al., 1994 ; 30)
• A SUBJECT: a body of knowledge rep. reality
• What is the rationale behind subject:-knowledge is incomprehensible, complex, amorphous
• Every subject represents a distinct body of knowledge
• A distinct way of arriving at knowledge and ultimately truth.
• A distinct way of arriving at a particular knowledge
• every academic discipline is unique

22. • The uniqueness derives from its content
• Indeed every subject has its own logic and language
– history has its own language, maths, divinity, sociology, politics etc, etc
• Also every academic subject has its own contend – geog, shona, accounting,
psychology law

23. • Additionally, every subject generates its own mode of thinking about reality
• thus if you claim some expertise in a particular field you should demonstrate it by adopting
the particular mode of thinking in interrogating reality
• One should have a flair for that subject, i.e in the manner one interrogates issues
• Thus a lawyer shows that he is one, by interrogating reality legalistically, or a scientist
scientifically, politician -politically etc, etc
• Thus, this particular contend, language or jargon and mode of thinking only makes sense
firstly to the initiated or to those ‘inside’ and not those on the periphery
• However, what is critical to note is that while every subject represents a particular
knowledge, cumulatively all subjects contribute towards KNOWLEDGE

24. • Thus, philosophy like any other academic subject has its own unique contend, mode
of thinking and language
• the content of philosophy is unique in that it is all reality – physical and metaphysical
• In this regard all subjects are the concern and thus constitute the contend of
philosophy
• This is based on the claim that, philosophy is regarded and rightly so as the ‘mother’
of all knowledge
• Thus, philosophy pervades and permeates all knowledge

25. • no academic discipline which can claim immunity or indifference to
philosophy
• Every academic discipline might have its own unique contend and
language but in varying degrees borrows from or depends on
philosophy on its attribute of rigor and critical thinking

26. Of Philosophy & Questions
Philosophy: Speculative (theoretical/hypothetical) & contemplative
(thoughtful/meditative/reflective),
• Epistemological/epistemology – study of knowledge
• Metaphysical/metaphysics – reality – physical/material or
spiritual/supernatural
• Logical/logic - study of reasoning
• Axiological/axiology – study of values
• Semantical/semantics – correct use of language

27. Epistemological
• One of the most important of the four branches of philosophy
• The term is derived from two Greek words, episte (to know or knowledge) and logia (
rational discourse) Chemhuru, 2011).
• Central to this branch of philosophy is the concern with the nature of knowledge
or that which constitutes knowledge.
• Oniang’o[1994] defined epistemology as the branch of philosophy which
investigates the origin, structure, methods and validity of knowledge
• Christian [2006] defined epistemology as: the study of human knowledge
• It is the study of knowledge or the theory of knowledge.

28. • Crucial questions asked in this area are:
• what is knowledge?
• What does it mean to know something?
• What is the difference between knowledge and belief?
• What can be known beyond the information provided by the senses?

29. • How do we know that which we claim to know?
• What conditions need to be satisfied for something to be called
knowledge?
• What are the types of knowledge?
• And what does it mean to say something isn’t true? Therefore, any
discussion about knowledge must implicitly also be a discussion about
the nature of truth - but what do we mean by 'true'? And what does it
mean to say something isn’t true?

30. What is knowledge
• Various definitions can be proffered
• A dynamic human process of justifying personal belief towards the truth
• Plato’s definition is widely considered apt
• Defines knowledge as justified true belief.
• Critical to Plato’s definition is that he provided what can be regarded as a
framework or criterion for evaluating any claim as constituting knowledge

31. Plato’s three- fold criteria
Justifiability
❖To claim to know something one must justify it
❖One must provide sound reasons based on sound evidence as a basis for acceptance
❖To claim that X died one must provide sound evidence e.g a death certificate to that
effect.
❖To claim that it is 100 kms from X to Y one can easily measure the distance and that
comes as evidence to support the claim

32. Truthfulness
• In addition to having evidence to support one’s as knowledge, one’s claim
must be true
• the claim should have a truth value
• Thus, if one claims that X died, and then presents a death certificate to that
effect, it must also be true that indeed X actually died.

33. Belief/Believability
• The third criterion for a claim to hold as knowledge is the belief condition.
• belief is a state of mind which affirms a particular state of affairs
• Any contend that we hold as true
• By holding it as true the knower must believe in its truthfulness
• It must be believable
• The three conditions must be fulfilled if one claims to have knowledge of
something

34. Characteristics of philosophy/philosopher
• In as much as philosophy permeates all bodies knowledge even its
characteristics do the same
• These cut across all subject arrears and are critical to all
• We focus on these because science and any other academic discipline needs
and depends on them

35. Critical Thinking
• Critical thinking is the analysis and evaluation of ideas and information in
order to reach sound judgments and conclusions.
• Hence, critical thinking involves learning to challenge our assumptions by
asking the hard questions.
• Critical thinking focuses not on what causes a belief, but on whether it is worth
believing. A belief is worth believing, or accepting, if we have good reasons to
accept it.
• The better the reasons for acceptance, the more likely the belief is to be true.

36. Essential ingredients of this attitude are:
• inquisitiveness,
• imagination and capacity to see beyond the immediate and familiar to the underlying complexities
or the whole
• The ability to see the whole and not parts of the whole
• A questioning mind
• Asking the unaskable questions
• Innovativeness
• A creative mental disposition

37. Conceptual clarity
• Conceptual clarity is premised on conceptual analysis
• This entails the analysing of concepts to arrive at some sound clarity in order to
enhance our understanding of the concepts when we use them
• This is critical so that in our usage as well as application of them we have a
common meaning and a shared understanding of the terms and concepts in
education
In the absence of shared meaning and understanding based on conceptual clarity there
is bound to be misunderstanding and misinterpretation in the implementation of
educational programes and intitiatives.

38. Justification and reasons
• Justification behind claims
• Reasons behind beliefs, practices,assumptions
• Reasons behind everyday, taken-for-granted issues
• Reasons commonsensical/obvious

39. Coherence
• Refers to solid belief systems, ideas, arguments and decisions
• The beliefs we hold as professionals must be justifiable, credible and not
contradictory
• Coherence enables us not to be self-contradictory in our beliefs and the
manner we relate with students

40. Comprehensiveness
• Philosophy by its very nature makes one to have a comprehensive view of
reality
• Whilst reality and phenomena has parts philosophy enables one to unite the
parts into a comprehensive unity
• Comprehensiveness entails the notion of having a wider cognitive
perspective of reality
• Critical for education and educators, because they must see and appreciate
the relationship between the various knowledges they impart to the learner

41. Epistemic awareness vs epistemic naivete
• Epistemic awareness- a more informed awareness of what we know, how
we know it and also what we do not know, and the dependability of what we
know
• Epistemic naivete- a condition in which we have not yet started to
question the origins, nature and dependability of our information

42. Consistency
• Philosophy emphasises the need for consistency in our beliefs, how we treat
others as well as the learners
• Accordingly, our standards professionals must be the same for all students
• Consistency guards us against biases and favouritism especially in our
interactions with students

43. Creative
Creativity is one of the characteristic of a philosopher
Creativity involves
• thinking outside the box
• Breaking the box breaking out of expected patterns in order to look at things in a different way.
• seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
• making ordinary things exquisite and extraordinary.
Philosopher s creativity cannot be likened to that of painters, writers or musicians but they display their own type of
creativity which makes them leave a distinctive mark on everything they do, see and say.
This is based on their ability not only to see but more importantly to notice, are capable of discerning new
dimensions to issues and events which the ordinary person would not notice.

44. Problem Solving
• Equips one with problem solving skills of
Analysis
➢ Problem analysis is the act of defining a problem, determining the cause of the problem,
identifying, prioritising and selecting alternatives for a solution and implementing a solution.
➢ Problem analysis therefore, investigates a situation/problem in order to allow the researcher to
understand more fully the problem, in order to recommend practical solutions for solving it.
Diagnosis
• Diagnosing a problem involves searching or understanding the root causes of a problem.
• This is the first step in problem solving. You cannot solve a problem that you do not understand.

45. third eye, ears
Ability to
• see what others cannot see
• Hear what others cannot hear
Essentially equips one with a third eye not only to see but to notice a third ear not only hear but
listen
Equips one with
• Humility
• Patience
• groundness

46. Summary & conclusion

47. References
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London.
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• Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (2015-2022) Curriculum Famework
• Chemhuru, O. (2011) Philosophy: Its Relevamce to teacher education, Book Love, Gweru.

48. • Ozman, H & Craver, M (1986) Philosophical Foundations of Education, Merril Publishing Co. London.
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49. • Gribble, J. (1972) Introduction to Philosophy of Education, Allyn aand Bacon Publishers, London.
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Education and Training of 1999 with special reference to Chapter 4 (Hunhuu/Ubuntu –
Holistic Education)’, Zimbabwe Journal of Educational Research, 22(3), pp.357-365.
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50. • Makuvaza, N. (1996) ‘Missionary Education in Perspective: Against the Theory of
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51. • Heinz-Peter Gerhardt PAULO FREIRE (1921–97)
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