The Status of "Ability" in the Age of Information : A Wittgensteinean Perspective(<Special Issue>Educational Research in the Age of Information Society: Themes and Concerns)

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  • 情報化時代の力の行方 : ウィトゲンシュタインの後期哲学を手がかりとして(<特集>情報化時代における教育学の課題)
  • 情報化時代の力の行方--ウィトゲンシュタインの後期哲学を手がかりとして
  • ジョウホウカ ジダイ ノ チカラ ノ ユクエ ウィトゲンシュタイン ノ コウキ テツガク オ テガカリ ト シテ

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"Responding to the advent of the information society" has been one of the pillars of educational policy in Japan since the 1980s. In the debate over academic competences that has unfolded since the late 1990s, neither of the two opposing camps seek to define these competences in terms of knowledge as a representation of reality; instead they both agree in defining it in terms of the ability to effectively process information. Suppositions concerning "the information society" have become factors implicitly shaping current educational discourse; one might even say that an "antirepresentationalism" congruent with these suppositions has now become a common tenet of contemporary educational theory. The later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein is a major locus classicus of antirepresentationalism, and in terms of pedagogy, has been interpreted in line with the tendency of contemporary educational theory to privilege "ability." This paper will attempt a different interpretation of the later Wittgenstein, as a philosophy that in fact undermines the very foundations of such educational theories. Contemporary educational theory attempts to magically bridge the difficulties involved in teaching by employing the philosophical construct of an "ability" posited as residing in the mind of the child. In contrast, Wittgenstein, through his uncompromising commitment to an anti-representational stance, on the one hand, exposes the uncertainty of the act of teaching, and on the other, deconstructs the notion of "ability" as a state of the mind. As a result, education appears to be an extremely fragile enterprise. We may surmise that Wittgenstein directly encountered this fragility during his tenure as an elementary-school teacher. However, in Philosophical Investigations he hints at the potential for a realistic, as opposed to idealistic, way of bridging over the fragility of education. This potential exists in the mechanism of the media comprising the educational process. It is in the medial structure of "example"-the use of example to express that which is not comprehended in terms of what is-that the thread of this potential is to be grasped.

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