Two new essays on ignorance and moral reasoning
I was surprised this week to receive page proofs for not just one but two essays I had all but forgotten about. I wrote them both about two years ago, which is a long time even by the sad standards of academic publishing. But I’m very happy to see them finally coming to print, because they still feel vital.
Both essays make the same basic argument: that a certain practice of ignorance is central to moral reasoning. The heroes are Socrates, who claimed only the “peculiarly human wisdom” of knowing he knew nothing, and Augustine, who claimed that what knowledge he had was only a gift received after despairing of trying to obtain it. Both essays are working through what it means to teach moral reasoning.
The slightly earlier of the two, “AI and the Pedagogy of Ignorance,” was written for a Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum conference in October 2023. The immediate practical question in view there was whether this new-fangled thing called ChatGPT had a place in our ethics classrooms (in short: no!). Generative AI has changed in some fascinating and relevant ways since 2023, but I think the main argument holds up. It will be in the next issue of Teaching Ethics.
The other, “What are We Teaching When We Teach Moral Reasoning?,” was written for the Society of Christian Ethics conference in January 2024. That one responds to Jonathan’s Haidt’s dismissal (in The Righteous Mind) of “the rationalist delusion” by arguing that ancient “rationalists” like Socrates and Augustine have a much more subtle understanding of reason than Haidt does.
If you read either one and have thoughts, I’d love to hear from you!