Hitler: Why we need a Science of Morality

[D Keen]

> From observing a decade of my mother's grade 8 students, it is not clear to
> me that the majority of high school students could learn logic, even if
> were a required subject. What is worse, it is not clear to me that the
> bulk of high school teachers could *teach* it. But then, I remember
> *my* grade eight year as a nearly continual battle wioth a math teacher
> who was convinced that there was no such thing as negative infinity,
> *by definition* whereas I was certain that there had to be one ...
> --
> Laura Creighton
> ihnp4!hoptoad!laura utzoo!hoptoad!laura sun!hoptoad!laura
> to...@lll-crg.arpa

I am afraid that I will have to agree with Laura. Based on most
of the psychological research on logical reasoning, there is
little evidence to suggest that academic training transfers to
real world or even semi real world situations. There is a large
body of very depressing literature on this topic. Even
something as simple as set inclusion problems show no
improvement on the basis of academic training in logic. Granted
this research is done with college students which opens entire
other issues e.g. the thought processes of these individuals are
already firmly established (the too late theory), but my cynical
nature suggests that even if one believed that ethics, logic,
morality could be taught we don't have the vaguest notion of how
to do so in a reliable manner.

Donald Keen
AT&T Consumer Products

P.S. I ceased doing and following this area of research over
five years ago, but I doubt that any substantial changes have
occurred in the data.