Rules, technique, and practical knowledge: awittgensteinian exploration of vocational learning

Educational Theory

Volumn 56, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 407-421

  Winch, Christopher ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 47649110444     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2006.00235.x     Document Type: Review

References (45)

1. Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics (London: Dent, 1925).
2. Joseph Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground (South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), chap. 10.
3. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
4. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London: Methuen, 1962), chap. 1.
5. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
6. Ibid.
7. George Sturt, The Wheelwright's Shop (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
8. See Gordon P. Baker and P.M.S. Hacker, Scepticism, Rules and Language (London: Blackwell, 1985);
9. and G.P. Baker and P.M.S. Hacker, "Malcolm on Language and Rules," Philosophy 65 (1990): 167-179.
10. See Rush Rhees, "Can There Be a Private Language?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplement 28 (1954): 81-82;
11. Norman Malcolm, "Wittgenstein on Language and Rules," Philosophy 64 (1990): 5-28;
12. and Claudine Verheggen, "Wittgenstein and 'Solitary' Languages," Philosophical Investigations 18, no. 4 (1995): 329-347.
13. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 187-188. For similar and related remarks, see Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), 12, 97;
14. and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953), § 495.
15. Rhees, "Can There Be a Private Language?"
16. See A.J. Ayer, "Can There Be a Private Language?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplement 28 (1954): 63-76.
17. Ayer maintains that, in principle, an unshareable private language could be developed by an ab initio solitary. In Scepticism, Rules and Language and "Malcolm on Language and Rules," Baker and Hacker deny this, claiming that Wittgenstein intended to argue that a language could be developed by an ab initio solitary but that it would have to be shareable. Rhees (in "Can There Be a Private Language?") and Malcolm (in "Wittgenstein on Language and Rules") maintain that Wittgenstein's argument should be interpreted to mean that language (and rules more generally) must be ab initio shared.
18. See, in particular, Rush Rhees, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
19. Ernest Gellner, "Review of Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science," British Journal of Sociology 11, no. 2 (1960): 170-172.
20. See, for example, Rhees, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse, chap. 5.
21. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge, 1921).
22. Rhees, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse, 190-191.
23. Wittgenstein's account needs to be distinguished from the superficially similar one offered by R.S. Peters, which is much more susceptible to the "mechanical" interpretation. See R.S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation (London: Routledge, 1958).
24. Gordon P. Baker and P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity: An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 41ff.
25. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 85, 188-189.
26. Gordon P. Baker and P.M.S. Hacker, Language, Sense and Nonsense (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 254-255.
27. Jonathan Bennett, Rationality (London: Routledge, 1964).
28. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 199.
29. See Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics; and Donald Schö n, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
30. Geoffrey Hinchliffe, "Work and Human Flourishing," Educational Philosophy and Theory 36, no. 5 (2004): 535-548.
31. See, for example, Michael Smith, "The School Leadership Initiative: An Ethically Flawed Project?" Journal of Philosophy of Education 36, no. 1 (2002): 21-40.
32. Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, book VI, 141.
33. For a discussion of this pattern of reasoning, see David Carr, "Knowledge in Practice," American Philosophical Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1981): 53-61.
34. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969); and Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).
35. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, § 318-321; and Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, "Logic in Action: Wittgenstein's Logical Pragmatism and the Impotence of Scepticism," Philosophical Investigations 26, no. 2 (2003): 125-148.
36. Examples of localized hinge propositions are discussed in Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 106, 291, and 309. For more on this, see Moyal-Sharrock's discussion in "Logic in Action."
37. People qualified at this level are able to work independently on tasks and have the capacity to apply specialist-level knowledge, skills, and competencies (see Mike Coles and Tim Oates, European Reference Levels for Education and Training [Luxembourg: Office of Official Publications of the European Communities, 2004], www2.trainingvillage.gr/etv/publication/download/ panorama/5146-en.pdf). In some countries, such as Germany, they also have considerable responsibility for planning their work and ensuring its quality, as well as working in teams with other people. Examples would be bricklayers, hotel workers, and motor vehicle engineers. There are also newer Berufe recognized in Germany, such as mechatronics
38. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776; repr. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), book 1, 139-140.
39. Phillip Brown, Andy Green, and Hugh Lauder, High Skills: Globalisation, Competitiveness and Skill Formation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 79, citing Wolfgang Streeck, "Lean Production in the German Automobile Industry: A Test Case for Convergence Theory," in National Diversity and Global Capitalism, eds. Suzanne Berger and Ronald Dore (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), 145.
40. Bernard Pujo, Histoire de Vézelay (Malesherbes: Perrin, 2000).
41. See Sturt, The Wheelwright's Shop.
42. See, for example, Paul Hager, "Front-Loading, Workplace Learning and Skill Development," Educational Philosophy and Theory 36, no. 5 (2004): 523-534.
43. Rush Rhees, "Wittgenstein's Builders," in Discussions of Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 1970), 83.
44. For an argument to this effect, see Linda Clarke and Christopher Winch, "Apprenticeship and Applied Theoretical Knowledge," Educational Philosophy and Theory 36, no. 5 (2004): 509-521.
45. Christopher Winch, "Work, Well-Being and Vocational Education," Journal of Applied Philosophy 19, no. 3 (2002): 261-271.