graham vs poor methods of belief formation

It occurs to me that I've complained too much about marking this past week.  I often grumble about it, but this time around I'm doing it much more than usual.  And to be honest, it's perfectly justified.

Wait--perhaps I'll give some context.  

You all know that I TA philosophy, which involves both running small class sessions (tutorials) but also marking.  Most of you can probably guess the difficulties that arise from having a bunch of first or second year students try to write decent papers.  This is compounded by the fact that many students have the unfounded idea that philosophy is easy: so they don't try very hard and then sit in my office complaining when they get a poor grade.  But that's a story for another time: the point is, marking papers is often a frustrating endeavor because at least 2/3rds of the students don't care.  And since I care, it's disappointing.  Two of the greatest treasures that belong to humanity are language and reasoning--one can only see them butchered so many times. 

This semester, however, I'm teaching intro ethics.  How to think about morality.  What I've discovered is that most of my students don't do very much thinking about the subject.  My experience is that the majority of students can't even conceive of turning these powerful tools of analysis onto themselves.  Everyone has their biases, but some manage to simultaneously acknowledge their existence while rationalizing away their presence.    

We're supposed to be discussing big ideas: concepts and debates that effect our daily lives!  I'm not asking for excitement, but merely appreciating the gravity of a question like capital punishment. Instead I have the next generation of middle management staring back at me.      

There of course exists glimmers of hope.  One is the students who care--most won't become philosophers but there are a handful of students in every class who are actually striving to be engaged, thinking humans.  The second is the possibility that if I hammer away enough, I can at least make a small crack in the wall of unreason and apathy I'm confronted with most days.  

I should relate this to training so I don't simply sound like I'm venting.

 If the goal of the I Ho Chaun is not only to become better martial artists but also engaged humans, the scope of such a project is intimidating.  Because the difficulty and importance of such an endeavour goes all the way down.

In many ways, the reasons we have for holding a belief often matter more than the belief itself.  This is because we tend to think of our reasoning process as static: it's hard to imagine oneself absent the beliefs and principles we each hold dear.  But the reality is we are all wrong about some things, and we could be wrong about pretty much everything: our particular moralities, our faiths, whatever.  I'm not saying that everything is merely opinion: I'm affirming the opposite.  Each individual person, however, has flaws in their belief structure.  Correcting those flaws takes a lifetime.  There are few fixed truths in the world, but since we have the displeasure of dealing with it, best to plunge on with that in mind.

Sifu Robertson