“不言之教”的哲学意义

Laozi's “Wordless Teaching” from a Philosophical Perspective

自柏拉图以来,知识不仅被定义为有证成的真信念,而且被看作教育的认知目标。然而,知识的定义遭遇了盖梯尔问题的挑战,这使得知识不再被看作教育的认知目标或唯一认知目标。教育领域的盖梯尔问题是指,虽然学生给出了正确答案,但是,他并没有掌握正确答案背后的科学原理,他仅仅是碰巧给出了正确答案。这个问题也被称为教育的认知运气。从教育认知运气的角度可以重新发现《老子》“不言之教”的哲学意义。所谓“不言之教”并不像陈汉生认为的那样是反对语言或者放弃语言,而是反对自以为是、故步自封的学习方式和教学方式。对“不言之教”的解释不仅借鉴了威廉姆森的认知主义,而且得到《老子》文本证据的支持。

Since Plato,knowledge has been defined as justified true belief and therefore regarded as a major educational objective in the cognitive domain.However,this definition of knowledge has been challenged by the Gettier Problem,which,in education,refers to the situation where students provide correct answers but do not really understand the logic behind them—they merely arrive at the correct answers by chance.In other words,there are possible cases of true justified belief without knowledge but with “epistemic luck”.Therefore,knowledge should be regarded as something rather vague and complicated,just like what is meant by Laozi's idea of “wordless teaching”.To be more specific,“wordless teaching” is not against or without linguistic communication;instead,it just opposes dogmatic and outdated ways of learning and teaching.This article is to analyze the concept of “wordless teaching” based on both textual evidence from Laozi's Tao-Te Ching and the epistemic theory of Timothy Williamson(a renowned philosopher at Oxford).