| In the context of postmodern critiques of traditional theories of knowledge, a number of new approaches to epistemology and learning have emerged. One purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the recovery of a meaningful sense of objectivity in the realm of education and learning. Specifically, I explore the role of reason in the learning process, through a reconsideration of George Herbert Mead's theory of the self, particularly as it relates to Daniel Dennett's theory of consciousness and John McDowell's conception of the relationship between mind and world. The concerns motivating this project are guided by the following questions: (1) What insights into the nature of knowledge and learning are available through an intersubjective understanding of mind?; (2) What is an 'educated mind', and how is that concept related to the capacity for reason?; and (3) How are theories of the mind relevant to issues of self-awareness, civic education, and global understanding? One conclusion drawn in the dissertation is that reason, far from being one capacity among many that education seeks to develop, is fundamental to the field of experience in which the learning process is constituted in the first place. This is not to say that a narrow focus on rationality ought to be the only or primary aim of education. It does, however, lead to the recognition that an individual's capacity to act rationally is always implicated and transformed through any educative experience, properly understood. Furthermore, this inquiry develops an understanding of knowledge in terms of process, as an activity of mind within the sphere of the social (defined in a particular way). Knowledge is best understood as standing in a certain sort of relationship with events and conditions in one's environment, characterized by an integrated conception of the culmination of past events and existing circumstances and a readiness to respond to change effectively and with intention, in action directed toward an imagined future. Finally, the theory of mind defended in the work posits a conception of reason that binds together the Socratic quest for self-knowledge with the cosmopolitan ideal of world citizenship. |
