A little course in logic could go a long way

Epistemology. It is a wonderful word much loved by fans of precise language and by academics, partly because of its layers of meaning and partly because of the way it just rolls impressively off the tongue at an opportune moment in a speech or presentation.

It is a word that probably should find its way into more common usage, because epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, justification and the rationality of belief.

Much of the debate in epistemology centres on the analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such increasingly foreign concepts as truth, belief and justification — or lack of same.

The notion of epistemology has become newsworthy because a version of the oft-used phrase “that’s just like, your opinion, man” is now a feature of political dialogue. The phrase originated in a memorable scene in the 1998 comedy film The Big

Lebowski and was the character The Dude’s response to almost any idea or statement he did not accept.

The phrase has gained political usefulness when employed to dismiss someone else’s point of view that is based on evidence or fact.

The whole question of where opinion and demonstrable fact and defensible knowledge intersect became headlines recently when, despite ample information to the contrary, U.S. White House press secretary Sean Spicer refused to admit to a room full of journalists that President Donald Trump’s statements about the number of people who voted illegally was not supported by evidence.

Spicer’s argument, like the Dude’s, amounted to “that’s just your opinion” and emphasized that the president’s opinion, all evidence to the contrary, was that there were millions of illegal votes, saying “the president has believed that for a while” and that should be good enough for the media.

That statement would not have survived any level of epistemological examination by a 10th-grader.

Edmund Gettier is an American philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. He is best known for a brief 1963 paper: Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?

In his increasingly timely treatise, Gettier argued that there are situations in which one’s belief might be justified and yet not be anywhere near sufficient to count as knowledge.

The worrisome part is that “that’s my/his/her opinion” might become more and more, even in the most influential circles, a satisfactory substitute for truth.

Consequently, there is a good argument to be made for the inclusion of some of the more accessible aspects of a study of philosophy or at least some philosophical concepts such as epistemology somewhere in the senior-secondary school curriculum.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument for “philosophy light” to become part of the curriculum is because philosophy teaches thinking.

The study of philosophy teaches the student to think rationally, starting with observations and propositions and arriving at conclusions following the rules of logic. It teaches one to analyze arguments and to expose logical fallacies.

If what we see happening in Washington, D.C., is any indication, the ability to think — really think — is a scarce commodity today. Everyone has an opinion about everything, but does not find it necessary to explain or defend their opinion. Emotion or long-established prejudice trumps reason, logic and evidentiary fact.

So maybe a study of some of the precepts of philosophy is overdue, even in high school. Even a brief introduction to study of philosophy would help students to learn to think rationally, starting with observations and propositions and arriving at defensible conclusions that stand up to logic.

Philosophy is already taught at the senior-secondary school level in some countries. France, as an example, requires all French lycée students on an academic track to study philosophy up to eight hours a week. There is even a final exam that revolves around questions such as: “Does language betray thought?”

Our kids, who will become tomorrow’s political leaders, might be the generation to restore respect for rational debate of the big issues. They, we hope, will be the ones to replace intractable opinion and self-righteous anger with the kind of balanced and lucid thought a democratic society has a right to expect from its leadership.

Maybe a short high-school course on epistemology, the study of knowledge, factual justification and the rationality of belief won’t accomplish that by itself, but it would be a start.