My personal mission drives my current educational experience, and this new quest is much more about the journey than the destination. The courses available in my M.S. program will not achieve my goals unless I “take the wheel” when opportunities arise. This particular course offered the opportunity for me to start assembling the mosaic required for my mission. This opportunity came in the form of a final paper, constructed in three increments during the latter half of the 2023 Spring semester.
Step 1 was a two-page introduction to gain the reader’s attention and clarify my thesis. In my case, it alerted me to reduce my scope and focus on just one element of my overall mission—the need to define a new pragmatic framework for the dialogue of contentious topics. Other components of the mosaic I plan to assemble will have to wait for new opportunities in my journey.
Most of us have observed or actually participated in family discussions over a holiday meal that escalated not only into hubris and confrontation but the loss of mutual respect. My paper describes a deontological ethic I have devised to avoid such outcomes.
The second step was a short presentation in one of our synchronous online classes to explain the issue, the thesis, the proposed solution, and a list of remaining components of the paper necessary for successful completion. Comments from my class colleagues and the professor offered valuable points for consideration.
I should also note that this new ethic is one I developed and successfully applied during the past four years while writing my recent book. It is not something I dreamed up just to fill an assignment.
The remaining work I needed was to connect this issue and its solution to K-12 education. Since this ethic is a method for navigating disagreements, it was straightforward to recognize children have many differences of opinion but few tools to navigate through them to a reasonable conclusion that also retains mutual respect. This ethic does just that because it turns the contentious nature of the dialogue from “what” is said to the “why” behind the words. Philosopher David Bohm referred to this as “tacit ground” that we often defend but rarely reveal. In this ethic, our reasoning is allowed to stand outside of us to defend itself or not, and we can learn from the encounter. Philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine has called this “objective pull,” a force that can advance the thinking of all participants in the dialogue toward the objective.
Finally, the one remaining element was to justify incorporating this new ethic into K-12, already a battleground for “shelf space.” My argument is: disagreements abound, they must get resolved somehow, this ethic is narrow in focus, it is rule-based and easy to instruct, not related to or dependent upon religious beliefs, and can become a valuable skill for a lifetime.
The third and final step in the course was the submission of the completed paper (16 – 25 pages, double-spaced). As I write this, the paper has not been graded despite the fact that my overall grade for the course has been recorded, thus I know the paper has not led to a lowered grade.
Neither my thesis nor my solution ever had the full support of my professor. Nevertheless, my aim was to satisfy my own requirements before any others. In fact, an opportunity arose after submission to apply my new ethic in a discussion we were having via Twitter about a contentious topic. It seems the position of authority obstructed the professor’s willingness to follow the deontological rules required, something I actually predicted in the paper. An opportunity to engage toward a win-win outcome was missed as opposed to the win-lose one that occurred. This was not really surprising to me since the issue of debate is subjective truth (i.e., your truth, my truth). Not everyone recalls that “subjective” and “knowledge [truth]” have been connected since Plato’s Theaetetus. Maybe the light will come on when my paper is read in greater detail.
It seems that philosophy often dismisses subjectivity in its endeavors to find objective explanations. This seems misguided as it takes the color out of the object. And if we are left with just black-and-white, all challenges would have been solved with nothing left for the rest of us to do. In my opinion, while subjectivity is not the goal or even a goal, it most certainly is a valuable means for achieving that objective goal.
Looking at my journey ahead, I expect that “taking the wheel” to get to where I want to go will continue to be necessary when opportunities arise.
Tom O'Connor
At the age of 77, Tom O’Connor entered graduate school for the first time at the University of Kentucky. His career includes: a B.S. of Industrial Engineering (Auburn, 1968), a U.S. Navy Officer, a software systems engineer, project manager, management consultant, and author. Tom’s current mission is to connect public philosophy (ethics) with K-12 education; the segment of life he believes to be ground-zero for the formation of one’s identity, morality, ethics, and values.
