Mark R. Seely, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology
 

(and toby-dog)

Office: Chapel Basement, room B102A, Ex: 6294

  Summer 2009 Office Hours:

 

By Appointment Only

 

 

Teaching Philosophy

Student Evaluations

Non Discrimination Policy Statement

Curriculum Vitae

Some Recent Publications

 

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.

--Dr. Seuss (from The Lorax)


                                         

   











My Teaching Philosophy

 

 Part I: The Cult of Expertise

            An American philosopher at the turn of the last century, C. S. Peirce, suggested that there are four possible ways of acquiring knowledge about the world.  The first of these is the method of tenacity.  This refers to our tendency to believe things that are comfortable for us to believe, and to refuse to revise our beliefs even when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary or an absolute lack of evidence in support.  Perhaps the belief in life after death is a paradigmatic example of such a tendency.  Another way that we can acquire knowledge is through the method of authority.  Here our beliefs are based upon what the experts tell us, or on what we have been told by persons in positions of power.  Our parents are the first authority figures in our lives.  Many of our earliest beliefs come from what they tell us.  As adults in a complex society, we come to accept that we have no choice but to rely on the experts; and we readily accept that their knowledge, within a defined sphere, is superior to ours.  This is true even for those who have become experts themselves in some field.  This is somewhat surprising because experts in many areas are often keenly aware of how limited their own knowledge is, and that in many cases their “expertise” consists simply in having acquired pragmatic tools for solving common problems that arise within their domain of putative expertise (ask any auto mechanic to give you a detailed explanation of the physics behind the internal combustion engine and you are likely to be disappointed).  Peirce discussed two other methods for attaining knowledge, the rational method (Peirce called this the a priori method because it involves reasoning using a priori facts about causes and their effects) and the scientific method.  The rational method is better than tenacity or authority because it involves the use of critical reasoning by the individual.  This is the method made famous in the character of Sherlock Holmes.  The scientific method is superior to all of the other methods because it subsumes the rational method, but tests the results of our reasoning in a way that lets the world have the final say.

            I will leave discussion of the scientific method for another time.  For now I just want to point out that conditions in our present society encourage reliance on experts and persons in positions of authority, and that, although there may be tendencies among some segments of society to discourage rationality, society actively discourages and even ridicules tenacity to a large extent.  The reason for discouraging tenacity is fairly simple: it is a prerequisite of accepting authority that you are willing to alter your existing beliefs if they do not accord with what the authority tells you is true.  And authorities are known to change their minds when circumstances warrant.  Critical reasoning is also a potential threat because critical reasoning can make you skeptical, and skepticism can cause you to question the authority’s authority.

            When social, political, and economic systems are simple, any individual person is capable of wearing many hats.  There are societies still in existence (but probably not for long) in which it is possible for an individual person to be pretty much all things unto himself.  He gathers or grows his own food; if he needs shelter, he builds it from raw materials that he collects; if he needs a tool, he likewise constructs it out of raw materials that he collects and fashions.  Increasing complexity means increasing specialization.  In our present society, such a lifestyle is prohibitive.  Even those individuals who have “gone back to nature” make extensive use of pre-existing tools and devices not of their own creation and quite beyond their knowledge and ability to create.  The normal course for a member of our present society is to adopt a posture of full acquiescence to expertise, and consequently, to personal impotence.  If the computer I am currently using to compose this text were to “crash,” I would have no choice but to enlist the assistance of someone who has been trained specifically to deal with computer problems.  Some degree of reliance on experts has probably always existed in human society.  Yet if I were writing this text a few hundred years ago and the tool that I was using to write with broke, I would simply go over to my friend’s barn and pluck a decent tail feather from one of his domestic fowl and re-fashion a new writing utensil with a knife blade that I might have forged myself.

            The tendency toward reliance on experts has been increasing recently at an alarming rate.  Expertise is big business.  The legal profession provides a particularly pellucid example of this tendency.  The necessity of legal counseling seems so obvious that only a fool would represent themselves in a weighty legal matter.  The culture-wide submission to expertise that supports the legal profession is mirrored in numerous other arenas to yield tax preparers, stock brokers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, beauticians, exercise trainers, social workers, financial advisors, web page designers, advertisers, nutritionists, psychotherapists, home decorators, psychic readers, and the list goes on and on.  That the role that persons on this list play is that of middle-man is clear.  What is becoming more and more obscure is that the role that they play is at least in principle entirely unnecessary.  The superfluity of some of the members of the list is still acknowledged in certain respects.  The perennial popularity of lawyer jokes reflects a certain awareness of the self-serving nature of the attorney trade.  But there are other middle-men that don’t belong on the list.  Not because they are not ultimately superfluous, but because they are no longer thought of as unnecessary, and the role that they play has moved from the optional to the required.  Included in this class is that particular breed of expert known as educator.

            When we are young, our primary care-givers are the experts of most concern to us.  Our concern gradually shifts as we enter the early grades.  As we become older and more knowledgeable, we are able to utilize numerous sources of expertise.  Once we enter college, we come across a slightly different kind of expert, the college professor.  These experts profess to have specialized knowledge in a particular domain.  And somehow, by attending their courses and reading the assigned texts and listening to their lectures, we are supposed to attain some degree of personal enlightenment regarding the domain in question.  That we could have acquired this enlightenment entirely on our own through the appropriate reading and discussion or apprenticeship with others who have themselves already been enlightened usually never occurs to us.  Or if it does, it is expressed in terms of dissatisfaction toward a poorly taught class: “I could have learned more from just reading the book.” But the truth of the matter is that there is no principled reason why personal expertise in any academic domain cannot be acquired though a personally devised plan of education.  There is no reason that, in this the information age, any of us needs to attend college--or elementary school for that matter--to acquire knowledge. 

  Why don’t more people take charge of their own learning?  Leaving aside the issue of certification, one answer is that we have been so completely indoctrinated in the cult of expertise that we find it difficult to imagine doing much of anything for ourselves.  Another problem is that we have learned not to act, even in our own long-term interest, without a clear and present immediate reward.  I once heard a story about an old man who lived in a basement apartment in Brooklyn.  Outside his window was a fire hydrant, and every day after school a group of local boys would use the hydrant as home-base in a rowdy game of stickball.  The old man hated the noise and would run outside to yell at the boys every time a missed pitch would bounce off his window.  The boys would just laugh at the old man and continue to play their game.  Then one day, the old man got an idea.  He went to the bank and bought several rolls of change: quarters, dimes, and nickels.  The next time the boys came around to play, the old man gave them each a quarter and told them that he so much liked to have them around that he was going to pay them money just for playing stickball in front of his window.  The kids thought he had lost his mind, but they took his money.  This went on for a few days, and then the old man came out and gave them all dimes, saying that he could no longer afford to give them quarters.  The kids shrugged their shoulders and took his money.  After giving the boys dimes for a few days, the old man switched to nickels, again claiming that he was too poor to keep giving them dimes.  The boys started to complain openly at this point, calling the old man a cheapskate (and other choice epithets, I’m sure).  Finally, the old man came out and told the boys that he could no longer afford to pay them any money, but he pleaded with them to continue playing in front of his window.  The boys left and never returned.     

              I am not sure of the actual source of this story, or whether it has any basis in fact.  It does, however, demonstrate a principle that lies at the heart of another story, one that is true and one that has been repeated countless times.  A child is born with a strong innate motivation to learn.  She actively explores her environment and she is fascinated by all that she sees.  She wants to understand her world, and is constantly asking her parents questions about how the world works.  Her desire to know is insatiable.  Then she starts school.  At first, school provides a wondrous whole new world that she must explore, and her drive to learn is indefatigable.  But slowly, almost imperceptibly, she begins to invest her energies toward rewards.  The teacher puts a star on her paper when she gets all of the colors right.  Then, in later years, the star is replaced with a letter.  A’s are better than B’s.  By the time she gets to high school, her inborn desire to learn about the world has been all but completely replaced by her desire to perform.  In college, she wisely refuses to direct her energies to any academic activities that are not directly relevant for supporting her GPA.  Exams and quizzes have to be employed to coerce her to read texts that she has no patience for.  What happens after she graduates?  What happens to her motivation to learn when there is no longer any external incentive?  She leaves with her stick and ball and never returns.

 

Part II: Statement of Teaching Philosophy

I am a facilitator of intellectual and personal growth.  I do not subscribe to the "information transfer" theory of knowledge. Learning does not occur through the passive transmission of factual information from one person to another (or from a textbook to a reader). Knowing is the ability to engage in effective purposeful interaction with people and things within specific contexts. Learning is an improvement upon that ability that is brought about through personal experience.

Course content is a means and not an end. The specific content of my classes serves as a medium through which to engender new habits of thinking. It is important that students learn "the basics" within a particular discipline or domain of study. However, the current "facts" in any area are continually being revised and replaced as new information and perspectives surface. Thus, the "facts" are not as critical as are the conceptual tools for thinking about and applying those facts.

My job is to help students learn to think for themselves.  Unfortunately, minds do not come equipped with instruction manuals. My purpose as an instructor is to help students acquire the tools necessary to take control of their own learning. This is not going to happen through osmosis; students need to be continually challenged. They need to be forced outside of their comfort zone. Thus, if you take a class with me, you can expect to experience varying degrees of discomfort--perhaps even downright irritation. I would not be doing my job if you felt otherwise.

 Dr. Mark R. Seely

 

See Buchler, J., Charles Peirce’s Empiricism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Company, 1939).

 

 

 

 

At present, Saint Joseph's College's non discrimination policy statement does not include sexual orientation as a category that is exempt from discrimination.  In my professional opinion, this is a grievous oversight on the part of the institution.  Thus it is necessary for me to provide the following statement regarding my own non discrimination policy and practices:

It is my policy, in all of my professional and personal interactions with the students, faculty, and staff of Saint Joseph's College, not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.





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