“The Inquisitor’s Burden: The Malleus Maleficarum and the Design Bias”
&
“Making Men Moral: The Design Bias and Organizational Change”
Abstract:
The two chapters, “The Inquisitor’s Burden: The Malleus Maleficarum and the Design Bias”
and “Making Men Moral: The Design Bias and Organizational Change” are related. Drawing
on design related principles abduced from a study of two late medieval / early renaissance
Dominican Inquisitors and what I argue to be their evolving interpretation of their office and
the Inquisitorial machinery (in “The Inquisitor’s Burden: The Malleus Maleficarum and the
Design Bias”), I explore (in “Making Men Moral: The Design Bias and Organizational
Change”) new ways to re-frame Quality Assurance Measurement (QAM) tools used to shape
contemporary educational systems. Rather than employ these QAM tools as policing policy
technologies with a descriptive focus on summative-ly measuring educational leaders and
institutions, my idea is to re-work these QAM technologies to focus on prescriptively and
formatively transforming and changing peoples and systems. Concerned with ‘schools’ and
educational ‘professionals’ in their focal and hence moral senses, this paper will be especially
interested in the shaping of the educator’s and educational leader’s wills. I end off with a
discussion of competing and complementary contemporary theories, and the training of
doctoral students in educational research.
Keywords: Abduction, Semioethics, Natural Law, Professionalism, Ethics, Education Policy,
Decision Engineering, Organizational Leadership, Design, Dominican Order, Inquisition,
Witchcraft, Heresy, Malleus Maleficarum, Quality Assurance, Thomas Aquinas, John Finnis,
Robert P George, Capabilities School, Amartya Sen, Sabina Alkire
Author Vita: Dr. Jude CHUA Soo Meng is Assistant Professor at Policy and Leadership Studies, National
Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he is Programme
Coordinator of and lectures for the Dual Award Doctorate in Education (EdD) Programme offered with Institute
of Education (IOE), University of London. He will also be a Visiting Academic at the IOE coming June 2011, to
deliver a seminar at the doctoral research week. With an enduring interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, he
has been annually a Visiting Research Scholar at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University since 2008. He earned his
PhD in comparative legal philosophy from the National University of Singapore under a president’s graduate
fellowship, and won a visiting graduate fellowship at the renowned Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the
University of Notre Dame (USA) and worked with the eminent natural law theorist John Finnis. He was elected
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), and earned a Fellowship qualification of the College of
Teachers (FCOT), London and was subsequently elected a Fellow of the College (FCollT). He won the
prestigious Novak Award (Acton Institute, Michigan) for outstanding research in religion, ethics and economics,
and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Business and Humanism at the University of Navarra, Spain.
Some of his works have appeared in The Modern Schoolman, Angelicum, Maritain Studies, Journal of Markets
and Morality, London Review of Education and Design Studies. His latest piece “Tracing the Dao: Wang Bi’s
Theory of Names” in Philosophy and Religion in Early Medieval China, Alan Chan & Yuet-Keung Lo (ed.),
(NY: SUNY Press, 2010), examines the connection between the Chinese neo-Daoist commentator’s semiotics
and political theory of moral pedagogy.
1|Page
The Inquisitor’s Burden:
The Malleus Maleficarum and the Design Bias1
Jude Chua Soo Meng
“Our Lord did not have to employ such foolish things to point out the straight and narrow path
to us. Nothing in his parables arouses laughter, or fear. Adelmo, on the contrary, whose death
you now mourn, took pleasure in the monsters he painted that he lost sight of the ultimate things
which they were to illustrate. And he followed all, I say all”—his voice became solemn and
omninous—“the path of monstrosity. Which God knows how to punish.”
A heavy silence fell. Venantius of Salvemec dared to break it.
“Venerable Jorge,” he said, “your virtue makes you unjust. Two days before Adelmo died, you
were present at a learned debate right here in the scriptorium…”
“I do not remember,” Jorge interrupted sharply, “I am very old. I do not remember…”
“It is strange that you should not remember,” Venantius insisted, “it was a very learned and fine
discussion, in which Benno and Berengar also took part. The question, in fact, was whether
metaphors and puns and riddles, which also seem conceived by poets for sheer pleasure, do not
lead us to speculate on things in a new and surprising way, and I said that this is also a virtue
demanded of the wise man.”
Jorge of Burgos and Venantius of Salvemec
in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
“This night, which, as we say, is contemplation, produces in spiritual persons…darkness or
purgation…”
St John of the Cross in
The Dark Night of the Soul
Introduction
Quality assurance processes are administrative tools to ensure that the standards of
professionalism of all those involved in education are kept high. But being professional
surely entails being ethical, as I have argued elsewhere.2 Without pretending to be exhaustive,
this present chapter together with the next, “Making Men Moral: The Design Bias and
Organizational Change”, also in this volume, considers a way to design quality assurance
1
I am thankful to Professor Father Joseph de Torre for his encouragement and critical comments on an earlier
draft; his concern for my reliance on Umberto Eco (even if merely peripheral) is appreciated. Some of these
ideas were presented at the “Renewing the Catholic Social Conscience” Conference organized by Las Casas
Institute, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford in March 2010. Many thanks to its Director, Francis Davis for
the kind invitation, and for having me as a visiting member of the Institute, and to the Regent of Blackfriars,
Professor Father Richard Finn OP for his kind remarks and encouragement, and Keith Chappell of Las Casas
Institute, Oxford for his patience and editorial work. My thanks are also to the seventh Sebeok Fellow, Professor
Susan Petrilli for sending me her cutting edge pieces on semioethics which I found very helpful, and for her
encouragement. This paper is dedicated to my beautiful wife Amelia and my baby son, Michael: through nights
displacing idolatrous self-seeking, signing new hungry yearnings, awakening me to the saturated.
2
See Jude Chua Soo Meng and Alejo Sison, “Herbert A Simon: Helping Professionals Find Themselves” in C.
Tan (ed.), Philosophical Reflections for Educators, Singapore: Cengage Learning (2008)., pp. 85-94; Jude Chua
Soo Meng, “Things to do on the Play-Ground: Topics for a Catholic Science of Design” Angelicum, 2011
forthcoming.
2|Page
processes to make educators, especially educational leaders, moral. While my
recommendations may most confidently apply to schools, they should also be relevant to
institutions that service non-educational goods, if for these institutions there are enough
shared assumptions.
My overall thesis in these two chapters is that when intending to cultivate (or sustain) the
professionalism of educators, educational leaders and of educational systems, we need to reimagine how current management processes can be employed, shifting away from certain
dominant theoretical biases. In this first chapter I draw our attention to several design related
principles abduced from a study of two late medieval / early renaissance Dominican
Inquisitors and what I argue to be their evolving interpretation of their Office and the
Inquisitorial machinery. In the next, I consider how these design related principles suggest
new ways to re-frame Quality Assurance Measurement (QAM) tools to shape contemporary
educational systems. In essence, I argue that: rather than employ these QAM tools as
policing policy technologies with a descriptive focus summative-ly measuring educational
leaders and institutions, one could rather re-work these QAM technologies to prescriptively
and formatively transform peoples and systems. The focus of both chapters is the shaping of
the educator’s and educational leader’s wills.
Methodology: The Dark Logic of Abductive Semiosis
In this chapter, the study of historical texts, persons and thinking in order to infer relevant
social scientific insights to further thinking has its inspiration in James March’s work,
especially his and Theirry Weil’s On Leadership. In that work, March considers characters
past and present, real and fictitious, such as George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan of Arc and
Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la mancha, and explores the various kinds of logic based
on which these characters operate, some of which he then uses beneficially to challenge
current epistemological or ethical biases in social science thinking.3
This way of employing ideas to challenge conventional thinking bears some
resemblance to Bartholomew de Las Casas OP’s use of his interpretation of the “Lord Jesus
Christ” as set out in the Holy Gospels to challenge the Spanish conquistadors on their forced
conversion of native Indians.4 Also similar is Thomas Aquinas’ development of his
metaphysical ideas, which was a result of his engagement with Neoplatonic texts like the
Liber de Causis and the pseudo-Dionysius, and from there he took the schema of
participation, which suggests that a higher being is received and limited by and according to
the mode of a lower being in the hierarchy of beings, which idea he then re-worked into an
Aristotelian discourse of act and potency, ensuring at the same time that the Being (Esse) that
was received by and according to the various lower modes of created being-essences was
really distinct from the latter, and thus we have the classic thomistic formulae: act is received
and limited by (a really distinct) potency, without which act is altogether unlimited. His
renaissance commentator Thomas de Vio Cajetan OP then further sharpened this axiom’s
3
James G March and Thierry Weil, On Leadership, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
See Jude Chua Soo Meng “Of Play Schools and Gifted Education: Reflections on Mutual Futures” in Aquinas,
Education and the East, Brian T Mooney and Mark Nowacki (ed), Netherlands: Springer, forthcoming.
4
3|Page
Aristotelian “fit”, as did the late Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, both corroborating
this axiom with great sophistication, calling on the example of the way in hylomorphic
composites, forms qua act are limited to and by this matter qua potency, short of which the
form could in principle be in composition with an other material potency, and thus unlimited
with respect this matter. Both eminent thomists were perhaps unaware of its Neoplatonic
counter-part as its “source”, which recent scholarship strongly suggests.5
In anticipation of any misunderstanding, the loose “inference” of such design related
principles from the study of the Malleus proceeds not by way of deduction, since I nowhere
pretend to be able to derive these general principles from particular examples, nor should
such “inference” be called scientific induction, since these general design principles have an
independent basis and are not really generalized from this text’s specific and determinate
insights; what rather is happening here is a kind of “inference” by abduction,6 where the
study of the Malleus offers interesting hypothetical intuitions that may not, strictly speaking,
follow from the Malleus, but which are nonetheless stimulated by that. These hypothetical
intuitions, if they are to be usable, may need other justifications or warrants, which can
therefore be provided to the extent that these ideas are defensible. Some of these critical
warrants and justifications are found, for instance, in the next chapter.
The logic of the abductive process, which is a form of iterative “sense-making”, though
fluid and creative,7 is not whimsical inventiveness, but follows certain interpretive rules, and
may be analyzed in terms of the semiotic represent-ing of a meaningful-signified-idea by a
sign-vehicle by way of an interpretant, with the interpretant at every stage of the semiosis
shaping or specifying the sign as sign, determining what the sign-vehicle means or where it
points to, as described by John Deely and his reading of C. S. Peirce and retrieval of John of
St Thomas OP (Jean Poinsot).8 However, such neat analysis is always post hoc. In itself the
abductive semiosis inevitably involves a measure of “groping about in the dark”, with fear
and trembling, there being as it were, a kind of searching and seeking for that which is
different from what we now grasp, and therefore, that which we do not yet currently grasp.
As the conventional old is being, with throbbing detachment, let-gone, and the illuminating
See W. Norris-Clarke SJ, “The Limitation of Act by Potency in St Thomas Aquinas: Aristotelianism or
Neoplatonism?” in Explorations in Metaphysics: God-Being-Person, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1994), pp. 65-88; Jude Chua Soo Meng, “Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP on Aristotle, Thomas
Aquinas and the Doctrine of Limitation of Act by Potency” The Modern Schoolman, Vol. 78, No. 1, 2001, pp.
71-88.
6
This kind of thinking is likely not too far off from a kind of “ascending induction” or more simply, ascent
(ascensus) mentioned by John of St Thomas (Jean Poinsot, 1631). See John Deely, Introducing Semiotic: Its
History and Doctrine, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Pp. 71-73: “Induction, as regards ascent, is
ordered to the discovery and proof of universal truths as they are universal, that is, insofar as they correspond
with the particulars contained under them….(c.f. Liber Tertius Summularum, cap. 2)”.
7
See also Susan Petrilli, “Abduction, Medical Semeiotics and Semioethics” in Studies in Computational
Intelligence (Model Based Reasoning in Science, Technology and Medicine), Lorenzo Magnimi and Li Ping
(ed.), Vol 64, 2007, pp. 117-130
8
See John Deely, New Beginnings: Early Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1994, esp. pp. 170-178; John Deely, What Distinguishes Human Understanding?, South Bend,
Indiana: St Augustine’s Press, 2002; John Deely, “Situating Semiotics” in John Poinsot (John of St Thomas OP),
Tractatis de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot, John Deely (trans. & arranged.), Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985.
5
4|Page
new is not-yet, we are as it were in a painful night, where few things are secure, clear or
visible. Thus only in retrospect, is it possible to detail systematically the path of discovery:
the first basic idea {in our case, the text of the Malleus} operates like a sign-vehicle, which is
then considered against some form of interpretant {here, the historical analysis guiding the
interpretive appreciation of the text} leading to a signified-meaning {in this case, the
Inquistors’ emerging understanding of the inquisitor’s office, explored below}; this latter
signified-meaning is then used in a next iterative abductive exercise, as a second sign-vehicle,
considered in turn against some other form of interpretant {here, the educational analysis of
and responses to various model biases in social action by James March} leading to some kind
of signified-meaning {in this case, reformulations of the Malleus’ emerging understanding of
the way the inquisition can or should operate, detailed below}…and in principle this may
continue, as it were, after the manner of unlimited semiosis,9 with each new signifiedmeaning operating via another interpretant as a new formal sign for yet an other
signified…ad infinitum.10 Having thus arrived, in our paper, at such a “network” of new
signified-meanings {viz. all these various related signs and significations, which I collect
under “the design bias”} the abductive process may then stop, if we see that this latest
collection of signified-meaning-ideas is potentially relevant and useful for thinking through
issues, revising paradigmatic biases, informing practice, etc… —otherwise, the
constructively abductive semiosis may continue.
It would be fitting to label my approach outlined here as a form of exercise in “semioethics”, that is to say, the drawing on our analysis of semiosis in its various forms to infer
implications for the ethical, and for thinking about the normative and practical more generally.
Susan Petrilli describes this “semioethic” attitude as follows, and I quote at length:
“A fundamental claim made by semioethics is that semiotics must not only
describe and explain signs, but it must also search for adequate methods of
inquiry for the acquisition of knowledge, in addition to making proposals as
regard human behaviour and social programming…The general science of
science cannot be limited to the study of communication in culture, and to claim
The more common account of “infinite semiosis” relates the way an interpretant (rather than the signified)
becomes itself a sign, calling out to another interpretant (with the new signified) (Peirce), but my own approach
seems better described as an infinite semiosis resulting from a signified becoming in turn a sign, pointing via an
interpretant to another signified, although if for the theorist the study of a sign results in infinite semiosis
through the interpretant becoming itself a new sign, that too would be welcome by my approach: the important
thing here is not whether the signified or interpretant becomes the new sign—indeed one might imagine things
going one way and then the other—but rather we achieve, whichever way, an unlimited semiosis that surfaces or
retrieves interesting new significations.
10
On the other side of the continent, this way of using a sign-vehicle (itself possibly a signification of some
other sign) to semiotically and creatively abduce a related idea may well have been at work in medieval Chinese
thinkers, in particular Wang Bi, who “reads into” the Laozi’s ontology or the Yijing’s Hexagrams another
network of equivocal but metaphorically related ideas, specified by the demands of his political philosophy. See
Jude Chua Soo Meng, “The Nameless and Formless Dao as Metaphor and Imagery: Modeling the Dao in Wang
Bi’s Laozi ” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol 32 (3), 2005, pp 477-492; also Jude Chua Soo Meng, “Tracing
the Dao: Wang Bi’s Theory of Names” in Philosophy and Religion in Early Medieval China, Alan K L Chan &
Yuet-Keung Lo (ed.), New York: State University of New York Press, 2010, pp. 53-70; also in the same volume,
Hon Tze-Ki , “Hexagrams and Politics: Wang Bi’s Political Philosophy ni the Zhouyi zhu”, pp. 71-95. Of
course, this deserves a separate paper.
9
5|Page
that semiology thus conceived is the general science of signs is a mystification.
When the general science of science chooses the term “semiotics” for itself, it
takes its distanced from semiology and its errors…
“Research on the relation between semiotics and ideology, such as that conducted
by Ferrucio Rossi-Landi and Adam Schaff, is particularly important given that
this relation is inseparable from the relation between signs and values—including
linguistic, economical, ethical and aesthetical values. Besides[,] semiotics
presupposes an approach to general semiotics that describes experience as a series
of interpretive operations, including inferential processes of the abductive type
(Peirce). Through interpretive operations that subject completes, organizes, and
relates data which otherwise are fragmentary and partial. As such experience is
innovative and qualitatively superior, by contrast with original input.
Semioethics basis its view of experience and competence on a dialogic theory of
signs, interpretation and inference…
“In a world governed by the logic of production and market exchange where
everything is liable to commodification, humanity is faced with the threat of desensitization towards the signs of non-functionality and ambivalency: from the
signs forming the body to the seemingly futile signs of phatic communication
with others. Capitalism in the globalization phase is imposing ecological
conditions that are rendering communication between self and body, self and the
environment, every more difficult and distorted. If we are to improve the quality
of life, it will be necessary to recover these signs and their sense for life. As part
of this project, a task for semio-ethics from the perspective of narrativity is to
reconnect rational world-views with myth, legend, fable and all other forms of
popular tradition that focus on the relation of human beings to the world around
them. The principle function of the semiotics of life, the ethical (semioethical), is
rich with implications for human behaviour: the signs of life that we cannot yet
read, that we do not want to read, or no longer know how to read, must be fully
recovered in their importance and relevance to the health of humanity and of life
in all its manifestations.”11
The purpose therefore, of such constructively abductive inferences based on the
Malleus is not to demonstrate (deductively or inductively) these general principles from the
Malleus, but rather to use the Malleus as a creative stimulus for new or different ideas. What
is welcome, therefore, is the study of the seemingly strange, distant and alien, which may
offer, with our persistent interpretive “decoding”, that which is interesting and perchance
surprisingly insightful to challenge the conventional, the biased or prejudiced, in order to
better our theorizing and practice, and in this respect the Malleus Maleficarum seems a good
candidate.
The Hammer of Witches
11
Susan Petrilli, Sign Crossroads in Global Perspective: Semioethics and Responsibility, John Deely (ed.), New
Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2010, pp. 27-31
6|Page
Written in 1487, the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches)12 is the work of two
Inquisitors of Germany, Dominicans Heinrich Kramer OP and Jacob Sprenger OP. In it, they
offer guidance on the do’s and don’t’s concerning the identification, interrogation, torture and
sentencing of heretical witches. In the beginning General and Introductory of Section III of
that notorious text, they also dispute the opinion of certain Inquisitors of their own Order of
Preachers “in parts of Spain”, regarding who and what nature of crimes come under the
jurisdiction of the Inquisitorial Court. These “Spanish Inquisitors” (if I may) had judged that
whoever is involved in the practice of witchcraft and such like divinations can be tried by the
Office of the Inquisition, since these, they argue, “savour of heresy”, as it is said in the Code
of Canon Law. Kramer and Sprenger disagree.13
The dispute turns on the interpretation of what the canonical phrase “savour of heresy”
means. Kramer and Sprenger point out that not all acts, no matter how vile and sinful, are
necessarily heretical, and therefore, not all acts of witchcraft and divination “savour of
heresy”. What constitutes heresy? Not: merely the practice of vile divinations, even those as
vile as the worship or sacrifice to the devil. There are several conditions to be fulfilled if one
is to be declared a heretic, and some of the central ones are: that there must be an error in his
reasoning, and that such error must concern matters of the Faith, and most importantly that
the person “must pertinaciously and obstinately hold to and follow that error”.14 Thus one
who worships the devil to satisfy his vile desires but does not belief falsely that the Devil is
not divine but only God is divine, is not a heretic, since there is no error in his belief. Again,
because one must be obstinate in error to be a heretic, therefore, neither is a person a heretic
if he merely initiates false doctrines, erring thus through ignorance and is “prepared to be
corrected and to be shown that his opinion is false and contrary to Holy Scripture and the
determination of the Church…[After all] it is agreed that every day the Doctors have various
opinions concerning Divine matters, and sometimes they are contradictory, so that one of
them must be false; and yet none of them are reputed to be false until the Church has come to
a decision concerning them.”15 They conclude, against the Spanish Inquisitors:
“The sayings of the Canonists on the words ‘savour manifestly of heresy’ in the
chapter accusatus do not sufficiently prove that witches and others who in any
way invoke devils are subject to the Inquisitorial Court, for it is only by a legal
fiction that they judge such to be heretics.”16
The Malleus Maleficarum continues with chapters discussing methods of Initiating a
Inquisition for those who manifestly are heretics, detailing the ways Witnesses are to be
employed, the method of handling confessions, the use of Torture to extract confessions and
the various forms of Sentences to be applied to different categories of heretics.
The Inquisitor’s Burden
12
Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, Montage Summers (trans.), NY: Dover
Publications, 1971. Henceforth MM.
13
MM, part III, pp.196-197
14
MM, p. 198
15
MM, p. 203
16
Ibid.
7|Page
Those who read the Malleus are shocked and appalled by the medieval methods applied in
interrogating those who have been judged heretics. And there is much in the moral
sensibilities of the modern reader to view the text in a negative light, not least our very recent
repudiation of the application of torture. Even if we set aside our historically uncontextualized prejudices regarding the use of torture in Inquisitorial trials, the Malleus
would come across as no more and no less than an effort to sharpen the (evil, you say)
inquisitorial machinery. Yet the burden of the authors, I feel, will not be fully grasped if we
do not take the discussion above into account. This discussion of heresy in the General and
Introductory of Part III leads me to think that for Kramer and Sprenger, an evolving
interpretation of the role of their Office is from one of merely cutting judgment towards one
including nurturing mercy. It is possible to sieve out from the Malleus Maleficarum signs of
such a paradigmatic shift. Kramer and Sprenger’s emerging understanding of their Office as
Inquisitors is the following, which I venture: to gently allow or enable those who commit
possibly potentially heretical acts to recant, or those who practice witchcraft to repent, even
prior to conviction. So a developing intention here is not just to police: to arrest, extract
confessions and sentence; but at least as much to redeem: to engineer conversion. Let me
explain.
Inquisitors on the continent had been producing “Guides of Inquisitors”. There is no
doubt the Malleus was intended like others already in circulation, as a guide-book, and
Kramer and Sprenger’s contribution was to have refined the technical definition of what is a
“heretic”, so that true heretics are accurately identified and subject to the Inquisition
(although this, one might note, put a great number of suspected heretics outside the reach of
the Inquisitorial Court, in comparison with the Spanish definition.) Be that as it may be,
there are particularly troublesome aspects of their definition, which leads to a host of
epistemic problems for identifying heretics—epistemic problems that seem too obvious to
have been missed. Their stricter definition of “heresy” shifts the focus from the external act
or effect, to the internal cognitions and intentions of the accused, which are obviously
difficult to discern. Even if this is correct, it allows the suspect to explain in time that the
cause of his past activity is other than those listed under the conditions for heresy—a cause
which Kramer and Sprenger argue must be discovered, and not hastily presumed. Thus,
Kramer and Sprenger warn Inquisitors not to carelessly impute heresy on those who do
practice various vile divinations:
“Such effects as the worship of the devil or asking his help in the working of
witchcraft, by baptizing an image, or offering to him a living child, of killing an
infant, and other matters of this sort, can proceed from two separate causes,
namely, a belief that it is right to worship the devil and sacrifice to him, and that
images can receive sacraments; or because a man has formed some pact with the
devil, so that he may obtain more easily from the devil that which he desires in
those matters which are not beyond the capacity of the devil, as we have
explained above; it follows that no one ought hastily form a definite judgment
merely on the basis of the effect as to what is its cause, that is, whether a man
does such things out of a wrong opinion concerning the faith. So when there is no
8|Page
doubt about the effect, still it is necessary to inquire further into the cause; and if
it be found that a man has acted out of a perverse and erroneous opinion
concerning the faith, then he is to be judged a heretic and will be subject to trail
by inquisitors together with the Ordinary. But if he has not acted for these
reasons, he is to be considered a sorcerer, and a very vile sinner [but not a
heretic].”17
Hence carefully read, the Malleus’ interest is not just to define what a “witch” is but
more importantly, what a “heretical witch” is. And therefore the third section writes not of
the ways for Inquisitors to trial witches, period, but ways for them to trial witches who are
heretics. This becomes clear when in the Malleus it details the ways of initiating a trail on
behalf of the faith against witches, meaning, by accusing the witch of offending the faith, i.e.,
of heresy. Witches need not necessarily be heretics, and these, for Kramer and Sprenger, are
not to be tried by the Inquisitorial courts.
This important conclusion was not in any way picked up by Hans Peter Broedel’s
analysis. In his recent The Malleus Maleficarum and the construction of Witchcraft,18 a study
that I believe to be suspiciously flawed in its treatment of the last section of the text, Broedel
presents Kramer (and Sprenger) as irrationally zealous in their desire to trial witches. Broedel
acknowledges that they “make the interesting argument that a witch is a heretic in the same
way as is a simoniac, only as a convenient legal fiction [as interpreted by Canonists].”19 This
is true of Kramer and Sprenger, but it means that for them, there have been many claims that
witches are heretics (by Inquisitors of their Order in parts of Spain) but these charges are not
correct and are completely made up, hence a “legal fiction”, a (canonically) legal
presumption without real basis in the facts. The implication for Kramer and Sprenger is
therefore that such witches are not to be tried by the Inquisition. Broedel does not seem to
grasp this argument, and while he does summarise their argument, seems to sweep that aside,
going on a tangent about the fact that there had been a long ongoing debate about the
Inquisitor’s jurisdiction, and conclude that the discussion was an “introductory
encouragement to their colleagues”,20 which totally escapes me.
I digress. Canonical questions aside, no doubt Kramer and Sprenger’s interpretation
of the scope of the Inquisitors’ jurisdiction can be challenged. Unlike the Spanish opinion,
which would punish and sentence as heretics whoever is involved in witchcraft for whatever
reasons or motives, the German interpretation of the scope of the Inquisitor’s office allows
(as it should!) for the possibility of excusing those who committed these seemingly heretical
acts for reasons irrelevant to the strict definition, but also, those who might indeed be
properly suspect of heresy, even under the strict definition, but report otherwise to escape
judgment (as it should not!). Again, because their definition of “heresy” requires the presence
of obstinacy, even those who commit acts inspired by “false belief” but are quick to recant
17
MM, p. 200
Han Peter Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum and the construction of Witchcraft, Manchester, UK:
Manchester University Press (2003)
19
Ibid., p. 33
20
Ibid., p. 34
18
9|Page
their error also escape the Inquisition’s reach (which should be the case)—just as well, those
who truly are obstinate heretics but pretend to renounce their heresy so to escape the
Inquisition’s reach (which should not be). In other words, since the inner intentions of
heretics are difficult to discern, and the establishment of the many cognitive conditions before
a practitioner of divination may be declared a heretic makes it possible for a heretic to
pretend to recant his beliefs, or to misrepresent his true intentions, in order to not appear
heretical. So while this particular German thesis of the Malleus tempers judgments that
might otherwise convict as heretics those who in fact are merely malefactors, it has the side
effect of also allowing some true heretics to pretend they are not, and given that severe
interrogations and the application of torture to extract confessions are applied only after the
person is judged manifestly a heretic, there would be no mechanism to sieve out these false
penitents who cannot at that stage be judged to be “manifestly heretical”. Whereas: the
Spanish opinion, even if it cannot survive the above scholarly objections concerning the
interpretation of the Canon, would not in practice allow such pretentions to fall through their
Inquisitorial nets.
Did Kramer and Sprenger grasp these troubling possibilities? What follows must in
the end be at most an educated guess, and will be a controversial piece of historical analysis.
But I find it hard to imagine the German Dominicans not anticipating these problems. Indeed
it would be rather odd to think any Inquisitor, not least Kramer and Sprenger, unfamiliar with
advice warning of the devious craftiness of heretics. This was a very real concern for
influential Inquisitors such as the likes of French Dominican Bernard Gui, who like Kramer
and Sprenger also think heresy is not to be judged principally by the subject’s external acts,
but through his or her internal cognitions. Yet Gui’s important Practica officii Inquisitionis
heretice pravitatis (Practical Manual on the Conduct of Inquisitions), c. 1323, has this to say
of these suspected heretics:
“It is too difficult to detect heretics when they do not openly admit their error but
hide it, or when there is not certain and sufficient evidence against them. In such
a case an inquisitor finds difficulties on all sides. On the one hand his conscience
is troubled if he punishes someone who neither has confessed nor been convicted;
on the other he is the more deeply troubled when he knows by constant
experience the falsity, untruthfulness and malice of such people. If by their foxlike
cunning they escape, to the injury of the faith, this very fact makes them stronger,
more numerous and more secretive.”21
It does appear that Kramer and Sprenger were not blind to these possibilities; later on
when detailing ways inquisitors should interrogate these heretics they warn of the need to be
on the alert against (manifest) heretical witches who deny everything, even under torture, or
employ mind bending tricks on the judge22—a piece of advice that would of course be totally
unhelpful for inquisitors dealing with any as yet un-convicted suspect, and who needs to be
Bernard Gui, The Inquisitor’s Guide: A Medieval Manual on Heretics, Janet Shirley (ed. & trans.), UK:
Ravenhall Books, 2006, p. 31. Italics mine.
22
MM, p. 210 onwards, after Second Head, Question VI
21
10 | P a g e
examined against those various conditions concerning internal intentions, which are, as we
have said, hard to discern. As a matter of fact, they several times insist:
“It is not a valid objection to say that an Inquisitor may, nevertheless, proceed
against those who are denounced as heretics, or are under a light or a strong or a
grave suspicion of heresy, although they do not appear to savour manifestly of
heresy. For we answer that an Inquisitor may proceed against such in so far as
they are denounced or suspected for heresy rightly so called; and this is the
heresy of which we are speaking (as we have often said), in which there is an
error in the understanding, and the other four conditions superadded. And the
second of these conditions should consist in matters concerning the faith, or
should be contrary to the true decisions of the church in matters of faith and good
behavior and that which is necessary for the attainment of eternal life. For if the
error be in some matter which does not concern the faith, as, for example, a belief
that the sun is not greater than the earth, or something of that sort, then it is not a
dangerous error [or heresy].”23
If we can assume they were not blind to these problems, what then can their response
be? To conjecture an interpretive but coherent reconstruction, perhaps it might be: that this is
an acceptable tradeoff, indeed something desirable; otherwise one judges and condemns all at
once—even those who would otherwise (truly) repent or be corrected. And this does seem to
be what they had in mind, suggesting that they grasped and welcomed the consequences of
the epistemic limitations inherent in the Inquisitorial process if it is guided by their definition,
because it allows for some repentance and correction prior to judgment by the Inquisition.
Notice, in the later parts of the General and Introductory of Section III, the Malleus
insinuates the possibility of repentance or re-conversion of those involved in witchcraft.
Kramer and Sprenger report of having themselves personally known some men:
“of whom a few afterwards repented…[who,] driven by poverty and various
afflictions, surrender themselves body and soul to the devil, and deny the faith, on
condition that the devil will help them in their need to the attainment of riches
and honors…, [and these] have behaved this way merely for sake of temporal
gain, and not through error in the understanding; wherefore they are not rightly
heretics.” 24
Again, their emphasis at length on heresy as the obstinate persistence in error suggests that
for them this is something the inquisitors have to watch out for, and that short of that, then
those who do not persist in error may not be justly called “heretics”—meaning, obviously,
that there could be those who may not persist in error…and hence are not to be considered
heretics: “for he was ready to be corrected when his error was pointed out to him.”25 It is also
pertinent to recall that, unlike our contemporary courts of law where the judge or jury
determines the guilt or innocence of the defendant through its due processes, the Inquisitorial
23
MM, p. 202
MM, p. 203
25
Ibid.
24
11 | P a g e
Court’s processes, viz. the extracting of confessions (through torture) and sentencing, start
after the Inquisitors have judged that the suspected heretical subject is indeed a heretic. This
means, therefore, that, rather than have these persons judged as heretics, and then, on account
of that judgment have imposed upon them penitential punishments to reform them, it is
possible that for these persons, self-initiated repentance and correction occurs prior to any
such definite judgment, at the stage of the Inquisitorial machinery where they are at most
suspected of heresy. Given Kramer and Sprenger’s strict definition of heresy, it is possible
that while some suspects would fit all those conditions, there will be others—even those who
had practiced witchcraft or other divinations—who reflect, repent or recant during the early
stages of their encounter with the inquisitorial machinery before any arrests or trials begin,
say during the temper gratia given by an edict of grace prescribing a period of about a month
when the Inquisitor begins to give his public sermons announcing the beginning of an
inquisitorial visit (visitas) in that particular town or province, as was the usual practice,
during which people could come forward to accuse themselves (or others) with a confession
and be absolved with a light penance, escaping death and the confiscation of property.26 Any
such premise that when confronted by the Inquisitorial machinery suspected heretics and
practitioners of witchcraft can repent or be corrected but do so prior to being judged by the
machinery as a heretic and sentenced to a life of penitence seems quite in character with
Kramer and Sprenger’s way of thinking, given their expressed and insinuated admission that
some suspected heretics do repent and can be corrected. It is perfectly consistent to think,
therefore, that, over time, Kramer and Sprenger grasped it possible for the inquisitorial
machinery to engineer repentance or correction on the part of suspected heretics or witches
prior to any judgment of manifest heresy. For the same reason, it is also consistent to think
that they then welcomed this, and that they integrated such a possibility as an intention of the
inquisitorial machinery and its modus operandi. What is historically consistent may not be
historically true, of course, and there is no direct evidence for my reading. Yet in this case, to
assume contrary-wise begs the question why there was the discussion highlighting the
possible repentance of suspects, and imputes a stupidity on these Germans at odds with the
intellectual sophistication apparent in their handling of the Canonical texts, and thus, leaves
more to be answered than less. If so, then we should say that when Kramer and Sprenger
crafted the Malleus Maleficarum, its definition of heresy, and therefore, by implication, the
reach and purposes of the inquisitorial process, there besides the intention to ensure that the
system would be one that judged and sentenced and punished “heretics” correctly, was also
the (emerging) intention, brought on by the difficulties of accurately determining the manifest
heresy of suspects, but also premised on the possibility that people can change, to allow for
repentance prior to conviction where it might occur. Nor is this, as Broedel might suggest,
out of character in the case of Heinrich Kramer, whom Broedel paints into a fanatical
Inquisitor obsessed with orthodoxy, eager to set aflame heretics.27 But such an image of
Kramer is not likely accurate. An appointment as Inquisitor presupposes certain qualities,
firstly sufficient theological training, and this would indeed ensure that the candidate was
careful on matters regarding doctrine, but it was also required of him that he be mature and
26
See Francisco Bethencourt, The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478-1834, Jean Birrell (trans.) Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 181-182
27
See Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft, op. cit.
12 | P a g e
balanced, having proven himself in matters theological and administrative. Thus a profile of
a Dominican Inquisitor is more likely as follows:
“a middle aged to elderly friar with considerable academic training and not a little
experience in the governance of men. At the time of his first appointment as
inquisitor a friar has to be at least forty years old. This was a well established
canonical requirement and was generally abided by…Friars who served as
inquisitors were never, then, impulsive young men; if anything, given the
customary long tenures, they are far more likely to have been sedate geriatrics.”28
So, I conclude thus. According to Kramer and Sprenger of the Malleus, the burden of the
Inquisitor, his Office and its machinery was not merely to evaluate suspects and judge them
to be heretics if they are (important as this may be), but also to foster these suspects’
repentance and conversion when they might be willing prior to conviction.
Abduction: The Relativist, Rationalist and Design Biases
I began this paper with the study of the Malleus Maleficarum because there may be pertinent
ideas to be abduced for educational research and practice. For Kramer and Sprenger’s
Malleus, the inquisitorial machinery does two things: firstly, it punishes obstinate heretics,29
in the usual manner and possibly in the way it was originally conceived to work, after a
judgment and conviction of manifest heresy, through its frightful sentences of penitential
punishments, but also secondly, for those who can be inclined to repent or recant, it fosters
repentance at the beginning, prior to any trial, interrogation, sentence or conviction. This
compares quite differently from the Spanish Inquisitors, who seem to be guided by several
dominating beliefs and interests, one following another. For they generally believe that:
1) the objects of their investigation (i.e., the suspected heretics) are unchanging
and un-repenting and therefore the primary response is to identify them, and
2) that such identification is easy, and not hindered by difficulty,30 and
3) one should apply one’s efforts to improve the tools or inquisitorial machinery
and processes, such as through crafting more and more sophisticated manuals
to be used on these persons to expose their unchangeable strong and heretical
wills, so to excise them from the mystical Body of Christ, the Church. Further,
4) they were predominantly focused on one way the inquisitorial machinery was
meant to work, viz. as tools for punishing after conviction of heresy, and were
not sufficiently interested or attentive to other ways it could operate, for other
effects.
Are there any possibly interesting ideas that may be abduced from these several points
abstracted from our study of the Malleus to challenge conventional thinking, and that could
28
C.f. Michael Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors: Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern
Italy, 1474-1527, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, (2007) p. 39
29
Such punishment is performed by secular officials, over to whom the Inquisitor hands the heretic.
30
Like the German Inquisitors, the French Dominican Bernard Gui considers heresy something internal and is
also conscious of the difficulty of discerning heresy.
13 | P a g e
offer something of insight for theory and practice? I think there are: bearing in mind, though,
that here we are not in the business of demonstrations, but are rather looking for signs of
signs of signs…ad infinitum, i.e., signs leading in semiosis to ideas, which may then be signs
of yet other ideas, etc., in a playful network specified by various interpretants.
I venture the following. These several dominant beliefs and interests of the Spanish
inquisitors seem to be symptomatic and constitutive of what James March has called the
“relativist and rationalist model bias”, or else seems to follow from these biases, which
essentially suggest that social theorists tend overly to think that their burden is primarily to
describe unchanging reality and preferences by way of a descriptive model (sometimes
oblivious to the complications in the attempt to develop such accurate descriptive models),
rather than to evaluate and / or modify preferences:
“Just as interpersonal interactions depend on models of human behavior, policy
analysis depends on a model of social policy making. The ideas for that model are
probably taken from, and are certainly consistent with, a view found in most
current social science thinking…[T]hey share a common normative view of the
process of choice. In that view, individuals or groups can be seen as having some
set of objectives that they pursue through action…Such a view has at least two
major biases that need to be questioned in terms of their policy implications. The
first is a relativist bias, the belief that preferences need to be treated as exonegous
primitives, not susceptible to normative evaluation. Each of the models of social
policy making presumes prior preferences. The second bias is a rationalist bias,
the belief that, from a normative point of view, purpose antedates action. Each of
the models of social policy accepts choice as appropriately consequent upon
purpose.” 31
March’s own response was to resist these biases and to develop a series of
“technologies of foolishness” to transform preferences of persons—a response that I have
developed elsewhere in “Saving the Teacher’s Soul: Exorcising the Terrors of
Performativity”.32 As an alternative to these biases, March and Simon write:
“…actions may produce goals as readily as goals produce actions. It is
convenient to think of goals as existing prior to organizations, shaping and
directing them. The prior existence of utilities is one of the most treasured axioms
of traditional theories of choice. But the conception is misleading. The process
runs both ways. If we ask someone learned in music how we can advance our
musical tastes, we will probably be told to listen to more music. In the same way,
we learn what we want from life (whether we be organizations and communities
or individuals) by living. By living, that is by producing and selling goods and
services, business firms encounter problems and opportunities that are
James G March, “Model Bias in Social Action”, Review of Educational Research, Vol. 42, No. 4, 1972, pp
413-429 at 416.
32
See Jude Chua Soo Meng, “Saving the Teacher’s Soul: Exorcising the Terrors of Performativity”, in London
Review of Education, Vol. 7 (2), pp. 159-167
31
14 | P a g e
transformed into preferences and desires. New products swallow up their markets
(autos for carriages; hand calculators for slide rules); inflation hikes their costs;
social changes produce new markets (women’s liberation and restaurants, the
automobile and suburban shopping marts); government regulations conditions
their goals (health and safety rules, environmental regulations); new legal rules
permit or exclude organizational forms (anti-trust, geographical limits on banks).
We create our wants, in part, by experiencing our choices.”33
Preferences and “wants” usually mean desires or appetites. Here, my interest is not
merely any preferential desire, but the “will’s” intelligent ‘preferring’ or better: what is
practical reason’s deliberation as it seeks (or avoids) goals it perceives to be good (or bad).
Hence, strictly speaking I am not concerned here merely with modifying preferences but also
with modifying wills. Still, what March has described as biases capture conventions worth
struggling with and critiquing, and his own responses also signal ways to reformulate into
more general principles the relevant ideas driving the paradigmatic shifts in these two
German Dominican Inquisitors’s self-understanding and interpretation of their own
technologies: that these are no more merely powerful tools to damn and judge, but also are
instruments of transformative mercy. Against the “relativist and rationalist” model bias,
which considers objective social reality not something to be evaluative-ly changed, and also
that such social reality is unchanging:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
one grasps that social realities can change, and change for the better; and that
the accurate descriptive measurement of such (changing) social realities are
fraught with insurmountable difficulties; from this it follows, against the
dominant fascination with descriptive measurements and judgments (of an
unchanging social reality),
one can now also focus on the engineering of people’s attitudes and behaviors,
and so, whether or not one has an interest centered on using intimidating-ly
coercive strategies to constrain the external behaviors of persons (who are
thought of as fundamentally and willfully unchanging), one can now also
explore use for one’s managerial policy technologies to encourage internal
practical reflection, thus shaping the will. Most importantly,
one can be attentive to welcome side-effects that emerge in time and integrate
these as new targets or goals.
These various ideas and principles—not at all exhaustive—I collect merely out of
convenience, under the phrase, the “design bias” since these are the ideas discussed and
defended, for such as the likes of March and Simon, in the field of design theory and
(decision) engineering.34 Certainly, it is in principle possible to persist in infinite semiosis,
James March and Herbert A Simon, “Introduction to the Second Edition [of Organizations], reprinted in
Explorations in Organizations, James G March (ed.), Stanford, California, USA: Stanford Business Books, pp.
47-48
34
I use the words “design” and “engineering” inter-changeably. See James March, A Primer on Decision
Making: How Decisions Happen, NY: The Free Press, 1996; Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd
Ed., Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996; Jude Chua Soo Meng, “Donald Schön, Herbert Simon and The
Sciences of the Artificial”, Design Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2009, pp. 60-68.
33
15 | P a g e
and to use any of these ideas collected under the “design bias” as a new representamen to see
what other significations exist…ad infinitum...35 An effect of such an exercise is that we are
able to generate in semiosis new ideas and new perspectives. Alternatively, our semioethic,
abductive study may end here, and if it ends here, then its primary scholarly contribution is to
surface new ways of thinking and seeing.
If we end here, then such an exercise, starting from and based substantially on our
hardworking study of the Malleus Maleficarum as our very first sign, would be valuable, and
would not have been futile. Because: sign-vehicles lead as a necessary part of the semiotic
triad (including the interpretant) to these significations, and therefore in a sense, without
interrogating these sign vehicles, the significations may remain hidden, forgotten or neglected.
But as Petrilli says: “the signs of life that we cannot yet read, that we do not want to read, or
no longer know how to read, must be fully recovered in their importance and relevance to the
health of humanity and of life in all its manifestations.”36 In this sense, these sign-vehicles,
starting with the Malleus Maleficarum, are like the codes that William of Baskerville
successfully interprets as clues, tracing those codes that the Librarian of the Benedictine
Abbey himself, in Umberto Eco’s The Name of Rose, would use to access the library or to
locate books hidden in the labyrinth of the library. Though the books are there, they may
remain lost; likewise, whilst the various ideas are about, somewhere, perhaps neglected, or
else forgotten, we could be unable to retrieve them. But now, thanks to the Malleus as a kind
of code, we have retrieved these lost books, resulting in something like what Edward
Schillibeeckx calls “critical remembrance” (anamnesis) of the past that has been forgotten or
risks being forgotten; decoding the Malleus, we have recalled these interesting significations.
Such an exercise in semiosis is necessary preparation for the turn towards the new mind; like
the groping about in a dark night,37 we are purged of our previous intellectual loves (either
speculative or practical) and pruned to receive that which previously saturated our
unreceptive paradigm(s).38
Still, if this is to be properly a semioethic project (although it need not be), our
semiotic study ought to have further relevance for practice or better, certain concrete
recommendations and applications, besides abstract historical remembrance (anamnesis). Or,
to put it another way, one retrieves a book to read it, although without, of course, at that point
in time, knowing everything in it that is to be read; yet, since one has the book in hand, one
can, when the time arises, further read and consult that book to see what it can offer. So,
having retrieved these “books”, the question may be now posed: how may we “read” them?
I.e., interpret them, grasp in them the signing towards yet other ideas more practical and
usable—in short, can we not also make applicable these recovered significations? I argue we
can. This is the purpose of the next chapter. So, having “retrieved” this “design bias” from
35
See also John Deely, Augustine and Poinsot: The Proto-Semiotic Development, Scranton: University of
Scranton Press, 2009, pp. 209-210
36
Susan Petrilli, Sign Crossroads in Global Perspective: Semioethics and Responsibility, op. cit., p.31
37
C.f. St John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul.
38
C.f. Jean Luc Marion’s “saturated phenomena”; see Brian Robinette, “A Gift to Theology? Jean Luc Marion’s
‘Saturated Phenomena’ in Christological Perspective” in Heythrop Journal XLVIII, 2007, pp. 86-108, which
relates this to Schillibeeckx’s “negative contrast experiences”.
16 | P a g e
the Malleus Maleficarum, our next task is to consider how it may offer something applicable
for our theory or practice, say in education. Thus, in the next paper, “The Design Bias and
Organizational Change: Making Men Moral”, also in this volume, I shall draw on these
various design related ideas, principles and intentions, and explore if thinking through such a
“design bias” may help us re-conceptualize educational systems and therefore re-engineer
aspects of our educational practice.
17 | P a g e
Making Men Moral: The Design Bias and Organizational Change
Jude Chua Soo Meng
“Master,” I said, “today many things have happened, grave things for Christianity, and
our mission has failed. And yet you seem more interested in solving this mystery than in the
conflict between the Pope and the Emperor.”
“Madmen and children always speak the truth, Adso. It may be that, as imperial adviser,
my friend Marsilius is better than I, but as inquisitor I am better. Even better than Bernard Gui,
God forgive me. Because Bernard is interested, not in discovering the guilty, but in burning the
accused. And I, on the contrary, find the most joyful delight in unraveling a nice, complicated
knot. And it must also be because, at a time when as philosopher I doubt the world has an order, I
am consoled to discover, if not an order, at least a series of connections in small areas of the
world’s affairs.”
Adso and William of Baskerville
in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
“Lawful exorcisms are reckoned among the verbal remedies and have been most often considered
by us”
Heinrich Kramer OP and Jacob Sprenger OP,
in Malleus Maleficarum
Connecting Re-capitulation and Overview
This chapter builds on the earlier chapter, “The Inquisitor’s Burden: The Malleus
Maleficarum and the Design Bias”, also in this volume. From that chapter’s study of the
Malleus Maleficarum and drawing on the progressive thinking of two German Dominican
Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger concerning the burden of the Inquisitor’s
office, we arrived at the below interesting and, in the context of particular dominant biases in
social science and policy work, the below unconventional general principles:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
one grasps that social realities can change, and change for the better; and that
the accurate descriptive measurement of such (changing) social realities is
fraught with insurmountable difficulties; from this it follows, against the
dominant fascination with descriptive measurements and judgments (of an
unchanging social reality),
one can now also focus on the engineering of people’s attitudes and behaviors,
and so, whether or not one has an interest centered on using intimidating-ly
coercive strategies to constrain the external behaviors of persons (who are
thought of as fundamentally and willfully unchanging), one can now also
explore the use of one’s managerial policy technologies to encourage internal
practical reflection, thus shaping the will. Most importantly,
18 | P a g e
(iv)
one can be attentive to welcome side-effects that emerged in time and
integrate these as new targets or goals.39
These abduced ideas I collected under the convenient label “the design bias”. I will argue
here that, used as a new sign-vehicle representamen, such a “design bias” can stimulatingly
inform educational thinking.
As I detail below, I suggest that such a “design bias” inspires the following ideas:
managerial technology policy-programmes used to measure and evaluate schools and to
guide the distribution of awards to schools can be beneficially re-conceptualized and
reshaped to function as transformative technologies rather than merely as descriptively
judgmental and punitive ones. Attempts by such policy technologies to measure and judge
educational organizations and their leaders are bound to be plagued by imprecision just as
they interfere with the measured subjects, leading thus to very significant inaccuracies that
will never be convincingly eliminated. However, such technologies have welcome sideeffects—viz. the shaping of behaviors and possibly intentions and wills—and that can be the
(new) point of such policy technologies. With a paradigmatic shift in terms of the policy
intention of these managerial technologies, it is possible to rework these into morally
transformative tools, thus engineering, if not always the fulfillment, but at least always the
occasion for gently shaping the practical reasoning or will of leaders, and protecting their
wills from various pressures to deviate from practical reason’s sound (and therefore, ethical)
guidance. I detail this below.
Methodology: Abductive Ascensus and Inductive Descensus
Using the “design bias” in this way to inform educational thinking is just one more act of
abduction—another semiotic exploration leading to the constructive free play of (new) ideas.
Let us be reminded that, we are not here inferring these new ideas deductively or inductively,
but rather allowing some measure of fluid inspiration. As Petrilli puts it,
“the abductive argumentative procedure is risky; in other words, it advances
through arguments that are tentative and hypothetical, leaving a minimal margin
to convention and to mechanical necessity. To the extent that it transcends the
logic of identity and equal exchange among parts, abduction belongs to the side
of excess, exile, despense, giving without a profit, the gift beyond exchange,
desire. It proceeds more or less according to the ‘interesting,’ and is articulated in
the dialogic and disinterested relation among signs—a relation regulated by the
law of creative love, so that abduction is also an argumentative procedure of the
agapastic type.” 40
But the staring objection is that one ends up with a series of semiotically connected ideas that
in the final analysis are all of them without critical basis, i.e., nominalistic fantasies detached
See Jude Chua Soo Meng, “The Inquisitor’s Burden: The Malleus Maleficarum and the Design Bias” in this
same volume.
40
Susan Petrilli, “Abduction, medical semeiotics and semioethics: individual and social symptomatology from a
semiotic perspective” op. cit., p. 1
39
19 | P a g e
from surer truths and realities. In many ways, this is one objection that may apply to James
March’s exploration of new logics through fiction. Through an interpretive reading of a
literary text like Don Quixote, March draws from therein the idea of a “logic of
appropriateness” which he contrasts with consequentialist thinking. However the question
arises whether such a “logic of appropriateness”, whilst interesting and different, is defensible?
This is indeed a valid question, especially for policy makers willing to adopt innovative
strategies but needing to do so responsibly and with accountability! To answer such an
objection, March ought to ground such an idea in something more stable, such as Kant’s
moral theory or some other established deontological ethics,41 or if that is not possible, to
show at least that it is credible to the extent that such an idea is not falsified by more
established ideas. Similarly, our “design bias” is open to this same objection: can we be
certain that such an idea is sound, before we draw on it to inform educational thinking and
practice?
On our part then, we need to “ground” our abduced ideas. This we can do by either
showing how such ideas are warranted by a more established body of ideas, or else test or
corroborate these ideas against such an established body of ideas, thus showing that these
new ideas cohere with such a body of established ideas, or that in some cases, that these ideas
are superior to these established ideas if there is to be conflict. Here, what we are in fact
seeking to do is to establish the rigor of these ideas, achieving something that is, if not a
“science” in the typical sense of something which satisfies the demands of a positivist
research agenda, then at least something which is a “science” in the more general sense of
something rigorous. In other words, we are trying to achieve some measure of confirmation
of our semiotic or abductive hypothesizing. To retrieve and adapt, through C. S. Peirce, Jean
Poinsot’s (John of St Thomas OP’s) pre-positivist thomistic scientific method, in this chapter,
aside from the abductive “ascensus” we hope to put our ideas to the test by way of inductive
“descendus”. Deely, writing against what he perceives to be the misleading post-Baconian
definition of deduction and induction as “processes moving between the points, but in
opposite directions; [with deduction] arguing from general principles to particulars facts [and ]
induction from particular facts to general principles,”42 commends a Peircean account, which
he reads in Poinsot, and I quote at length:
“It would seem that the most fertile development for semiotics in this area of
logic comes with the re-discovery by C. S. Peirce around 1866 that the notion of
induction is heterogeneous, comprising not one by two distinct species of
movement: the movement of the mind whereby we form a hypothesis on the basis
of sensory experience, which Peirce called abduction…, and the movement back
whereby we confirm or infirm our hypothesis with reference to the sensory, for
which movement Peirce retained the name induction. I call this a re-discovery,
Consider, for instance, Christine Koorsgaard’s Self Constitution: Agency, Identity and Integrity, New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009, in which she argues that Kant’s (and Aristotle’s) ethics see in good practical
reasoning the occasion for the determination of one’s identity through one’s autonomous actions, and so may be
promisingly relevant for the development of a defensible warrant.
42
John Deely, Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982, pp.
70-71
41
20 | P a g e
because it seems to be a fruitful elaboration of the distinction commonly taught in
the summulist tradition [is] between ascensus (“abduction”) and descendus
(“induction”). For example, Poinsot, 1631:
‘Liber Tertius Summularum, cap. 2: …St Thomas [c. 1269-1272a: Book I,
lect. 30] posits but two ways of acquiring scientific knowledge, to wit,
demonstration [deduction] and induction. Demonstration indeed is a
syllogism, which proceeds through univerals; whereas induction proceeds in
terms of singulars, by the fact that all of our knowledge originates from the
particulars perceived by sense. Induction is accordingly defined as “a
movement from sufficiently enumerated particulars to a universal”; as if you
were to say: “This fire hears, and that one, and that one, etc. Therefore all
fire heats.” And since opposites have a common rationale, its opposite is
understood, namely, decent, that is to say, the movement from universals to
singulars. And induction, as regards ascent, is ordered to the discovery and
proof of universal truths as they are universals, that is, insofar as they
correspond with particulars contained under them. For it cannot be shown
that anything is the case universally except from the fact that its particular
instances are such. Descent from a universal to a particular, on the other
hand, is principally ordered to showing the falsity of a universal as such.
For the falsity of a universal is best established by showing that something
that falls under it is not the case. At the same time, supposing the truth of a
universal established and discovered through ascent [abduction], descent
[induction] also serves to show the correspondence of the universals to those
singulars contained under it. Liber Tertius Summularum, cap. 3: “On the
Manner and Means of Resolving Terms by Ascent and Descent.”
…The reversal of terminology here—reserving the traditional term “induction”
for the phase of the process commonly but properly associated with it in tradition,
while substituting the new term “abduction” in place of the erroneously universal
common use of the term “induction” for the ascent wherein the mind unifies
experiences through the formation of representative notions—has considerable
pedagogical merit. In conceptualizing the matter thus, Peirce characteristically
transcends his modern contemporaries in the direction of a different and more
profound understanding of the foundations and origin of thought in
experience…[Thus Peirce (1902):]
“An Abduction is Originary in respect to being the only kind of argument
which starts a new idea. A Transuasive Argument, or Induction, is an
argument which sets out from a hypothesis, resulting from a previous
Abduction, and from virtual predictions, drawn by Deduction, of the results
of possible experiments, and having performed the experiments, concludes
that the hypothesis is true in the measure in which those predictions are
verified, this conclusion, however, being held subject to probable
modification to suit future experiments.”43
43
Ibid., pp. 71-74
21 | P a g e
Although not aimed at a science of laws derived from sense experience, our strategy is here
similar: (1) one arrives based on prior ideas through abduction a hypothesis, which (2) one
then tests, together with deduced corollaries, to see if false against some other truths, such as
a body of more established ideas.
In this chapter, such a body of more established ideas against which we test our
abduced ideas would be new natural law theory specifically and Thomism more broadly.
With such “descending inductions”, if I may, our ascending abduction would not be wild and
unexamined. I would call the reader’s attention to this last point because it is particularly
important if we are thinking about the application through policy making of these abducted
ideas: while a sign leads to another sign to another sign to another sign…ad infinitum, in
unlimited semiosis, it does not mean that, at the end of the series of significations, the final
idea, even if very interesting and unique, need not be rooted in and conditioned by a more
established body of knowledge, especially when these ideas will be realized and applied.
Originality, of itself, is no measure of truth.
Natural Law Theory: Catholic and Universal
That said, why ground one’s ideas in natural law theory? Why bother “fitting” these ideas
with or testing them against new natural law theory, and not others? In principle, there may
be other competing theoretical paradigms, and it is not impossible for those who find these
other accounts more defensible to draw on these. However, given the particular readership of
this book, some of whom are associated with Roman Catholic institutions and schools
operating in secular and secularizing environments, natural law theory when defensible
seems to me especially relevant for basing and developing a theory about matters educational,
since such a theory may be suitably employed when needed as public warrants in secular
contexts.
John Finnis reads in Aquinas the conclusion that ideas with a basis in revealed truths
can be public reasons—an important argument to study that concerns educational policy
thinking but which would require a separate paper.44 In any case, this is understandably still
a controversial proposal for secular states and ministries of education in such states which
consider the “separation of church and state” an important political axiom and to imply in
various ways the exclusion of religious premises or motives as public reasons. For the
purposes of this paper and for the sake of argument, I accept as a working hypothesis that
“public reasons should not appeal to revealed truths, but must rely on truths and principles
discovered by and accessible to unaided, natural reason.” This is obviously an extreme
definition of the separation thesis, but is necessary to ensure that our proposals are acceptable
to even the most fanatical defenders of the separation thesis.
If we assume such a sense of the separation thesis, Finnis’ natural law theory is as I
said fitting for educators associated with Roman Catholic schools because, even with the
conceptual constrains due to such an extreme separation thesis, the theory is for the most part
44
See John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp 320327
22 | P a g e
(or perhaps totally!, which may be true) normatively consistent with the teaching of the
Magisterium, especially on matters of human sexuality where the Church has found more
critics than defenders.45 Thus, Catholic school headmasters and school boards may therefore
rest assured that their foundational values need not be compromised when they take on board
the recommendations in my paper. More significantly, natural law theory is fitting for
theorizing about schools and education in secular and secularizing environments because
natural law theory proceeds with foundational ideas derived from the self-evident first
principles of practical reason, i.e., the natural law, available to unaided human reason, and
these self-evident principles do not epistemologically presuppose a prior belief in the
existence of God or other claims of a theistic metaphysics. I have elsewhere argued that such
a natural law theory would imply that only a theistic metaphysics is an acceptable corollary; 46
that may of course be contested, or else and in any case, since the natural law is knowable
without any prior grasp of a theistic metaphysics, it is accessible to secular persons whatever
their own religious or metaphysical commitments. As such, it is not at the out-set
epistemologically offensive to those who do not share the basic commitment of a theistic
metaphysics; instead the central warrants and justifications and reasons it leads to can be
communicated to, understood and accepted by (reasonable) secular authorities, parents,
stakeholders or other persons concerned with education, including those who endorse the
separation thesis above.47 Indeed, as Finnis shows, the natural law discourse is fully
translatable into a “human rights” discourse, and is hence particularly useful for engaging and
also challenging contemporary secular “rights talk”, which is at times fruitful, and at other
times misleadingly vacuous when a correlating theory of obligations is absent.48 Hence an
ethical theory like natural law theory, its ideas about ethics and practical reasoning , as well
as educational ideas and proposals built on these ideas are fully accessible to theists and
secularly minded persons alike, which leads me to the next point: because this chapter will be
grounded in natural law theory and its foundational premises are all secular qua naturalistic
and accessible to unaided reason, its proposals and designs for ethically transformative
technologies are hence aimed also at secular policy makers in education, and educational
leaders in secular schools. Ipso facto, one could say that this chapter is a thesis about
morally transformative technologies for schools universally, whether Roman Catholic or not.
Review of Recent Literature
Let us work through some fundamental preambles. Some time ago I argued in several related
papers for the centrality of practical reasonableness (i.e., sound ethical reasoning) in our
Very few continue to defend the wrongfulness of masturbation or homosexual activity. John Finnis’ (and
Robert P George’s) defence of conservative moral ideals continue to be challenged. See most recently Michael
Hand, “Should we teach homosexuality as a controversial issue?” in Theory and Research in Education, Vol. 5
(1), pp. 69-86, which in its criticism of natural law theory’s axiology unfortunately misses out completely on
Finnis’ argument employing a version of Robert Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment challenging
the belief that the experience of pleasure is an intrinsic good.
46
Jude Chua Soo Meng, “God and the Taming of Wicked Problems: Some Philosophically Required Frames in
Policy Design”, Angelicum, Vol. 85, 2008, 815-831; Jude Chua Soo Meng, “The Reason of God: Practical
Reasoning and its Anti-Naturalistic Implications”, Angelicum, Vol. 83, 2006, 21-42.
47
Put in another way, the thesis proceed by adopting a methodological naturalism, even if in the end it entails
ontological or metaphysical supernaturalism
48
See John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, op. cit., passim, and John Finnis, Aquinas, op. cit., passim.
45
23 | P a g e
conceptions of good schools and good (educational) professionals. How so? In probing the
signification of terms, as philosophy often desires to do, one is bound to ask, What is a
“School”?, or What is a “Teacher”? or, more broadly, a “Professional”?, since
professionalism is an important topic in education. One fruitful way to answer questions like
these is to do so with the concept of a “school” in its central case, or in its focal sense,
meaning: its significant sense.49 This significant concept is attractive and fruitful to develop
for speculative reasons—lest in unreflectively describing any school or professional, we end
up with just another possible concept, as it were, an arbitrary selection from amongst a family
of resemblances, when there may be one that is especially significant to know, or lest when
deriving a few common denominators amongst all possible descriptively true conceptions,
one ends up with too little to go with, and worse yet, with such a concept that still begs the
question, Why does such a concept matter for us to know? Practically, such a focal meaning
is immediately welcome since one is often eager to produce or reproduce the significant ideal,
the best, and the better off… (or other concepts based on other criteria of significance), and
knowing this and being able to differentiate this concept from the contrastingly insignificant,
corrupt, worse off, poorer…(or peripheral meanings derived from other criteria of
(in)significance) which we will wish to avoid and perhaps even to reform or punish, demolish
and shut down.
For a general theory, the concept of a school or professional in its significant or focal sense
would be one that relates schooling or professionalism to those ‘important things’ in life, or
perhaps those important normative ‘principles’, or in any case whatever that is important.
This means, in turn, that to arrive at such a focal meaning, we would need a priori those
sound judgments regarding these important things or principles, if such sound judgments can
be known. And, the focal meaning of a school or professional would describe institutions or
persons, respectively, that are amongst other things guided by these sound judgments of what
the important things and principles are.
These sound judgments are none other than the deliverances of one’s first principles of
practical reason, which prescribe a plurality of incommensurably basic goods to be worth
seeking and to be promoted, and their contraries as evils to be avoided, and everything else
that is implied by these various foundational practical principles coherently integrated interalia each other. These determinate prescriptions then constitute the store of principles
captured under the discipline we call “ethics”. Meaning therefore, that central cases of
schools and professionals are those that are guided by “ethics”, also called the “principles of
practical reasonableness” in the philosophical literature.
The various determinate conclusions of the principles of practical reasonableness cover war
and peace, governance, medical procedures, sexual morality, etc., and are beyond the limits
of this paper. Still, a relevant practically reasonable precept is that one should acknowledge
the reality of several (and not just one) objectively identifiable intelligible goods (and not
mere preferences) which are reasons for actions: life, truth, friendship, beauty, play, religion
Jude Chua Soo Meng, “What Is A School? An Answer Consistent with Human Rights”, Educational
Research for Policy and Practice, Vol, 5 (3), 234-255.
49
24 | P a g e
and practical reasonableness. This in turn implies that our deliberation to act (either for
ourselves or on behalf of the institution) should not harbor any denial of the basic choiceworthiness of each of these goods, or to put it in another way, we should be respectfully open
to each of these goods on account of their intrinsic choice-worthiness. I called this the “ethos
of openness”. Given that these goods are incommensurable, schools or institutions will seek
to advance very different freely chosen select combinations of these goods, giving one good
more weight (or none at all) than another in deliberation, but none should be motivated by the
(false) belief that any one of these are not goods. There are certainly other practically
reasonable principles that matter, such as the need “to be efficient within reason,” that welloiled schools (in Singapore) generally have little issues with.50 However, since the job of
ethicists is not to preach to the choir, I highlight the ethos of openness because of the
documented pressure in these schools to narrow their repertoire of things worth seeking in
schooling, or else, the appeal of various versions of “human capital thinking” leading one to
disregard economic externalities or reject non-economic reasons which may otherwise be
appealed to as a basis for educationally relevant policy decision or social actions, or worst,
the senseless attempt to commensurate all goods by way of economic indicators in order to
maximize the latter.51 Perhaps what is worth mentioning is the need also to be open to all
human persons universally when promoting these basic goods, since, “the basic goods are
human goods, and can in principle be pursued, realized and participated in and by any human
being.”52 Hence the ethos of openness is towards the plurality of basic goods as well as to
persons universally, without any arbitrary partiality towards one or some particular person(s).
While this would not without qualification be in tension with strategic investments in
particular groups of select students when resources run low, it would nevertheless contradict
any policy decision which judges on the basis of educationally irrelevant reasons (e.g., on the
basis of the student’s race, religion or social class, or headmaster’s arbitrary preference, etc)
that some select group of students to be unworthy of the schools’ initiatives, and to see in
these persons something to be contained, rather than persons to be educated and developed.
Problem Statement: Working Towards a Measurement Tool
Can we identify such a good School (using in School with the capital “S” to refer to the
school in its central case), or such a good Professional (similarly for professionals in the focal
sense we use the word with the capital “P”) if there was one? Yes, however it does get tricky.
In my earlier paper I suggested that, discerning if any school had an ethos of openness
towards the basic goods and persons would involve some kind of ethnographic study,53 with
the anthropologist immersed in the life of the institution and recording attitudes or
conversations—because what is crucial here is not the external action so much as the internal
See Hairon Salleh, “Action Research in Singapore Education: Constrains and Sustainability” Educational
Action Research, Vol. 14 (4), Dec 2006, pp.513-523
51
See Elaine Unterhalter, “Education” in An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability Approach:
Freedom and Agency, Severine Denenulin & Lila Shahani (ed.), London: Earthscan (2009), pp. 207-227. Also
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980, henceforth NLNR, pp.
112-113
52
Ibid., p. 106
53
Jude Chua Soo Meng, “What Is A School? An Answer Consistent with Human Rights”, op. cit., p. 254; Jude
Chua Soo Meng, “Thing to do on the Play-Ground”, op. cit., forthcoming
50
25 | P a g e
beliefs and warrants driving these actions.54 After all, someone who embodies the ethos of
openness may freely choose to omit certain goods for pursuit, without however, necessarily
believing that those omitted goods are not choice-worthy in themselves. Thus while a dance
school may respect the good of religion, it may focus more on aesthetic education and neglect
the religious formation of students—not however out of disrespect of the good of religion,
but simply by its free choice to focus on the other goods; and this is certainly within its rights,
for it is practically reasonable to freely choose one particular combination of goods to
promote or advance, given we are limited and cannot do all at once, and there is no rational
way of computing which combination is the “best” on account of the incommensurability of
the goods. Another dance school or institution may in fact despise the good of religion and
thus religious formation, and so willfully neglect the religious formation of students, and in
this case would violate the ethos of openness to basic goods, yet appear to the external
observer to be not too different from the first dance school. Yet another might think both
choice worthy, and so offer curriculum that features religious formation and dance classes,
but consider only the students from wealthy backgrounds deserving of such formation, and so
makes these accessible only to these, when there are less well-to-do but equally promising
students, violating thus, it seems, the openness to persons universally. This is contrasted with,
but not easily distinguished from the school which is open to the good of all persons, and thus
considers all students deserving of such formation, but given that they are struggling with
finances, will only make such classes available to those who can pay an extra fee, resulting
therefore only in those well-to-do students accessing these electives—yet, recognizing the
worth of these other poorer students, the school is exploring creative ways to make courses
available also to them, although such plans have not yet materialized. In sum: to differentiate
one from the other, it is never sufficient to observe their external behaviors, but one needs to
probe the warrants, justifications and rationale.
So suppose one aspires to craft a measurement tool to identify Schools (or Professionals), but
this, for reasons above, is not straightforwardly easy; any such tool would need to involve
some kind of qualitative research, which is complicated by matters of interpretation,
misunderstanding during interviews, nuances in language, etc, etc. And there is more: at the
core, the immense difficulty, if not impossibility, of accurately identifying such a “good
School” (or “good Professionals”) or whether any school (or professional) is much in line
with such a School (or Professional) is due mainly to the way what (or who) is evaluated
(through the leaders and participants) tends to morphe itself (or himself/herself) into
something that appears more in line with desirable criteria than to merely report things as
they are, for better or worse. This has been the experience in Singapore. The Ministry of
Education (MOE) in Singapore has developed a Quality Assurance Measurement (QAM)
Tool called the “School Excellence Model” (SEM), based on which it evaluates schools—
although to be accurate, it works by way of the validation of the school’s self-evaluation.
Given a rather enlightened broad spread of indicators ranging from leadership to logistics,
schools report on their own achievements over the few years with respect these indicators,
and submit these to external validation by inspectors who visit the school to corroborate these
54
John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 37-42
26 | P a g e
self-assessments. On first glance, the SEM or something like the SEM seems very useful for
measuring the quality of schools, even on indicators that do focus on systemic improvements
rather than narrowly defined indicators such as grade-point achievements. Still, scholars have
pointed out that there are persistent challenges:
“That measurement changes the nature of the object of measurement is an
important dynamic in educational quality assurance. The fact that one measures
certain education outcomes affects the nature of education. The moment one
defines a scale to education, one has changed the nature of education. The quality
assurance system is an active player in the system—it does not just measure
behavior; it changes behavior. In fact, what one measures may not be the actual
natural behavior, but rather the behavior induced by the act of measurement…In
Singapore, the SEM in theory is for self-assessment and improvement. The
awards are meant to promote quality in different areas and celebrate different
forms of excellence. But in reality, some school leaders may still interpret these
as measures for scrutiny, which can affect their schools’ competitiveness and
their own careers, hence the acute need to score well. Quality assurance, while
ensuring quality on the one hand, creates its own side effects to compromise
quality on the other.”55
Ascending Abduction: The “Design Bias” and Quality Assurance Modifiers
In spite of these criticisms, the SEM or any such like QAM may be sufficiently shaped
around these criticisms and this is something I wish to explore in this section. Notice I say
“shaped around”; strictly speaking, I do not contest these criticisms head-on. Rather I sidestep them, in the sense that: I will surrender to these identified side-effects and accept their
complications for measurement, but I welcome them for other (non-measurement) intentions.
This we do by drawing on the “design bias”.
Can the “design bias” suggest, through semiotic abduction (or ascensus, Poinsot)
something helpful? What strategies can it point us to? Perhaps the following. The first
criticism that needs to be addressed is that measurement does not so much measure reality
but rather alters it. The second criticism follows somewhat from the first, and this is that as it
alters reality, it alters these based on the indicators themselves, unintentionally and often
disastrously educational quality-wise. Although these seem like disastrous dynamics from a
measurement perspective, they might well be welcome effects from a design-biased
perspective. Let me explain. Recall: as it works, what happens is that participants in the
school report their own performance against certain prescribed indicators of excellence, and
as they do that they artificially re-construct themselves after these indicators. Assuming
measurement-wise there will be no way to get around such a Gordian knot and that such
interference with the objects of investigation is a calamity for aspirations to measure the “true”
status quo, still this is not at all dire if our hope is to employ these tools to usefully promote
the moral transformation of leaders, that is, not to measure their moral wills, but to shape and
Ng Pak Tee, “The Phases and Paradoxes of Educational Quality Assurance: The Case of the Singapore
Education System” Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2008, pp. 112-125 at 120-121
55
27 | P a g e
change their moral wills. Thus we accept the axiom that measurement changes behavior, but
no longer aim to measure, but set our sights on changing behaviour. If we shape our
measurement systems accordingly, with the latter intention in mind, then the axiom is good
news: here we have a tool that actually enables us to modify schools and professionals. Of
course, the second criticism may be inserted at this point, which is that sometimes such
changes ironically compromise on educational quality; yet such compromises in Singapore’s
case result from unintended side-effects, meaning that they are accidental results of the lack
of any designed and guided intention to transform behavior. Granted that we now fully
intend to transform moral wills, we should now of course reflectively shape the tools so that
it will produce the intended effects we hope to see, rather than to foolishly apply the
measurement tool for measurement leading to the unintended but fully fore-seeable
unwelcome side-effects harming educational quality.
How, precisely will that look like? I suggest that: under the new validation
programme, the self-evaluation exercise should not (merely) require the participants to
report on the broad range of achievements or terminal consequences against set indicators,
but now (also) focus on having participants report their professional (and hence morally
sound) warrants and justifications—practical reasons—behind their various school
leadership decisions.
Participants may of course be familiarized with natural law theory (if we think it is
sound), the various basic goods and other principles of practical reasonableness through
workshops or by way of the instruction package or manuals distributed to guide them when
they are completing their validation documentation. Certainly, there may also be
consultations with qualified ethicists and educationists in the development of these warrants
and justifications. Details of the contents of such an instruction package will need to be
worked out and can of course vary and be refined over time, and whether there is a need for
professional development insofar as ethics and leadership in schools or other such-like
relevant courses can be determined over time. Regarding the quality of such ethical
justifications or warrants, it is possible to begin with something of a certain standard and to
shift aspiration levels depending on what schools produce. To be fair, one need not expect
schools to begin with very sophisticated justifications, although over time, it is desirable to
see some of these warrants refined and finding expression as conference papers or in relevant
peer reviewed publications. Essentially, the general idea is that participants be given
incentive and support to begin to explore, to the best of their ability, (“sound”, i.e., consistent
with the principles of practical reasonableness) ethical justifications and warrants for their
educational decisions and therefore, be exposed to these.
Elsewhere, I explained how educational speech-acts (oratio) can “exorcise” the
terrors of performativity, and the same ideas form the basis of my proposal. When
educational participants whose epistemologies are constrained by organizational cultures that
are obsessively focused on unreflectively narrow indicators but are at the same time driven by
systemic incentives or “policy technologies of foolishness” to reconstruct or fabricate
themselves with a view to certain forms of presentations welcomed by such new awards
28 | P a g e
criteria, certain cognitive boundaries are broken, and exposure to morally relevant ideas is
possible:
“A policy technology of foolishness might be the promotion, welcome and
acceptance of (transitional) hypocrisy. In spite of the terrors of performativity,
educational institutions and its participants (esp. leaders) will inevitably represent
themselves in ways that feature valued educational outcomes other than those
highlighted in the performance indicators. Were it otherwise there would be
public outcry: politically correct rhetoric demands that one acknowledges, as
public citizens not possessed by the terrors of performativity do, intrinsic
educational goals such as building of student character and cultivation of the love
of learning in schools, besides the achievement of measurable examination
grades…The point of these hypocritical moments is to broaden the professionals’
cognitive grasp of valuable goals: as he exposes himself to these new goals and
rationales whilst preparing for or during these pretentions, he may perchance
come to see the reason of and for such non-performative goals, and their
attractiveness… It is not inconceivable that such rewards criteria are integrated
with the current indicators of the performative regime, in order that the promotion
of such hypocritical experimentation leverage on the terrors of performativity. (It
may be necessary, for best effect, to dismantle some of the old performative
indicators where possible, in order to loosen the focus of attention on the old
goals).”56
Any proposal like this is bound to face this objection: “what we might end up with are
“fabrications” of [morally sound warrants and justifications]; hypocritical orations function as
inert, empty rituals that do not alter belief, but are nonetheless performed with every pomp
and ceremonial glory to service other ends.”57 Nonetheless: such “committed fabrications are
themselves occasions for ongoing and further cognitive conversion; the pressure to be
consistent might even force change in the direction of behaviour. There is hence no need to
reject the sinner simply because he is not a saint; the policy openly welcomes the imperfect as
a stage on the path to perfection.”58 This is true in our case, where our new QAM—or better,
Quality Assurance Modifiers (QAMod)—encourage the development of practically
reasonable justifications and not just results, and when these practically reasonable
justifications are well crafted, then the sound practical deliberation for one’s educational
leadership and decisions is at hand to guide and rule deliberation. There is also the fact that,
if educational leaders attempt to rationalize their unreasonable actions and decisions
(motivated by arbitrary or whimsical preferences) with unsound arguments and warrants, this
would be apparent, and these unsound reasons would be criticized, and other and better
practical reasons consistent with a practically reasonable ethos of openness towards the basic
goods will need to be crafted. While admittedly the QAMod cannot guarantee that every
decision by the educational leader is motivated by good reasons, at the very least it can as
Jude Chua Soo Meng, “Saving the Teachers’ Soul: Exorcising the Terrors of Performativity” in London
Review of Education, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 159-167, passim.
57
Ibid.
58
Ibid.
56
29 | P a g e
best as it can ensure that these good reasons are present at hand so that educational leaders
can act based on these reasons. In any case it is hard to see who or what might be competent
to judge the interior motives of leaders, and when there are good reasons for a course of
action, the onus seems to be on the judge to explain why such courses of actions had been
otherwise motivated by other unwelcome motives which fit well with such a very course of
action.
Descending Induction: Comparisons with Related Theories
In this following section, I compare the arguments for such QAMod programmes with other
related published work encircling natural law theory on the contemporary scene, and suggest
how my proposals cohere with them, and therefore are fittingly warranted by them. At the
same time I point out ways my arguments may contribute to such contemporary work, in
places critically. In a sense, what I am doing here is to further the case for its “fit” with
natural law theory (and Thomism broadly), and where no such fit is possible, to arbitrate one
way or the other. What we do here is likened to what is described as descent or “induction”
in Poinsot’s terminology.
John Finnis on Practical Reasoning. An important idea captured under the “design
bias” is the attentiveness to unintended side-effects, which when judged welcome are then reintegrated into one’s policy intentions. On this basis I recommended we think about what
welcome effects emerged from the application of QA measures, and that we realign our
strategic goals accordingly and re-design QAM tools into QAMod programmes instead.
Herbert A Simon’s account of “design without final goals” in his Sciences of the Artificial
captures this idea nicely: he recounts the times when designers aim for a certain predetermined effect, but something else emerges (irrespective of the first intended effect), that
on inspection turns out attractive, and Simon suggests that it is not wrong to re-orientate the
design-ing towards the new set of effects, aiming therefore at a new set of goals.59 Simon
then takes this one step further by suggesting that one can even design in order to discover
new goals for which the designs can aim for; meaning that the implicit point of any design is
not just the targeted goal, but to “force” side-effects to emerge which when desirable can be
integrated into one’s design plans; design-ing to flush out desirable side-effects therefore
makes designing an “exploratory” activity, rather than an exploitative activity, which designengineering, following some carefully engineering blue-print, can often be.60 This idea is also
echoed in James G March’s discussion of technologies of foolishness, which are
psychological or pedagogical techniques to generate divergent ideas for improving decision
making, and one of which he describes as the acceptance of rationalizations—here, through
new interpretations of histories, leaders rationalize about their failures (judged under original
plans) and suggest the benefits that nonetheless emerged, suggesting that, although they are
excusing themselves for these failures, or even lying about their original goals, they are
59
60
Herbert A Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd ed, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996, p. 111
Ibid.
30 | P a g e
simultaneously also inviting others (and perhaps themselves) to recognize new goals and
benefits that the plan could have and have indeed achieved.61
Such ideas should quite easily be found to be compatible with thomistic principles, and thus
warranted by the latter. No doubt theorizing about “design” as a discipline on its own seems
for some like a rather recent phenomenon, but in fact one could loosely place the theorising
about “design” as a branch of philosophy that extends from the root of the ancient discipline
we call practical philosophy, which considers what are the principles that guide one’s acting
and doing. Therefore systematic philosophizing about design began as far back as Aristotle,
carried through to Aquinas and beyond. Now there is nothing, to my knowledge, in John
Finnis’ retrieval of Aquinas’ new natural law theory that has explicitly captured this
particular design process which Simon labels as “design without final goals”, although I
would argue that natural law theory should welcome such a design theory since natural law—
as did Simon, in a later work—recognizes a plurality of incommensurably valuable final
goods to be sought, leaving thus the new possible design trajectory aiming at the new goal
axiologically incommensurable with respect the original. Thus like Simon, natural law
theorists would agree that when reasoning practically to achieve an original goal, there is in
principle nothing wrong with aiming one’s intention in a different direction, since the
incommensurability of these goals means that there is no way of saying which course of
action is better or worse off with respect these different goals.
Also consistent and relevant is Aquinas’ attentiveness to the practical reality of
“intentions” and “effects besides the intention” (praeter intentionem), and the accurate
description of the nature of these realities offers in principle what else is needed for such an
account of design epistemology. For, as John Finnis reminds us, the very nature of
“intentions” as something intentional, that is to say, is something internal and cognitive,
being itself the adopted string of practical reasons identifying the very means and ends one
seeks when one wills an action, and therefore even if some consequent effect is foreseen or
much desirable, but not part of the original practical plan, it is not intended, but a side effect.
This reality is often employed in the thomistic literature to morally absolve the agent of those
undesirable side effects (even if foreseen), and has been classified under the phrase the
“doctrine of double effect.” But another application of this distinction, focusing this time on
side effects that are desirable, is to infer that: whilst a desirable side effect is not part of the
original intention (in one’s design or practical plans), it is possible in a new future intention
to adopt those very same means to achieve these desirable side-effects (previously unintended)
as the intended goals (now). In short, Aquinas’ recognition of such a thing as “unintended
side effects” sets the stage not only for absolving us from these things, but also for
intentionally welcoming them in a new and next intention, and also for design theorists to
remind us of such possibilities, and to not just let these possibilities pass.
Contrast Aquinas’ account with those that muddle desires and foreseen consequences
with intentions:62 under these accounts, often drawn from consequentialist circles, whatever
61
James G March, A Premier on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, NY: The Free Press, 1996, pp. 26226; James G March, “Model Bias In Social Action”, Review of Education Research, Vol. 42, No. 2, 1972, p. 424
31 | P a g e
foresee-ably emerges from one’s course of action or is desired is necessarily counted as part
of one’s plan (and what one is culpable for); here the recommendation to adopt (i.e., in the
future tense) these (desirable) effects as one’s design intention makes sense only if these
effects could not have been foreseen, or are undesirable. Conversely, if an effect was
foreseen or desirable, then the invitation to integrate these effects into the next design
intention makes little sense, since these effects already had been so “intended”. But might one
not say that, it is precisely those persons whose actions produce foreseen, desirable effects yet
fail to take these effects seriously and do so not by choice but through epistemic failures, that
should stand most to benefit from the recommendation to integrate these effects into their
design intentions? For: it is said that there can be a tendency in amateur designers or
bureaucratic administrators responsible for the design of policies under performative terrors
to be unreflectively obsessed with original goals, and to narrowly take only these goals
seriously, no matter what other foreseeable, desirable qua valuable effects become obvious—
yet in each and every of these cases no such critical recommendation is at all possible, since
these latter benefits have already all been “intended”. Therefore, unlike Aquinas’ account, the
lack of conceptual clarity here rules out the possibility of criticizing epistemic smallmindedness that continues to fester under the cover of the muddled jargon, and that continues
to neglect any pressure to further these other benefits or goals intentionally, and hence,
seriously and pro-actively.
More thomistic parallels to other neighbouring decision or design heuristics are found
also in Finnis’ retrieval of determinatio as Aquinas uses the word: the need to feely chose one
amongst many possible options which are (practically) impossible to be judged inter-alia to
be better or worse off, even with a commensurate criteria for comparison across options; and
thus, positive laws are at times chosen in this way, through determinatio, such as for example,
in the choice to have motorists drive on the right (rather than the left) side of the road, both
options commensurably measured against the same indicator of road safety. Aquinas’ own
example, as Finnis points out to us, is one of architecture, and the choice of the width of a
door to be built from amongst a infinite number of options—that is to say, having centrally to
do with design.63 Persons familiar with administrative theory recognize quickly how Aquinas’
determinatio shares much in common with the decision process (relevant to the design of
policies, for instance) labelled as “satisficing” by Herbert Simon.64 Like “determinatio”, one
“satisfices” when under conditions of bounded rationality it is just impossible to calculate the
most optimal means to a given goal. “Which width of such a door is best?” is not a question
that can be humanly answered, short of the capacity for comparing across every possible
option’s effect on a certain value function, all things considered. Such satisficing
determinatio is another basis for freely choosing one (sometimes, accidental) side effect over
the originally intended one as the intermediate goal qua means towards some further
commensurable value or end-goal when it is impossible to judge—because impossible to
consider all things—which is better with respect that further end-goal.
see John Finnis, “Intention in Tort Law”, in David G. Owen (ed.), Philosophical Foundations of Tort Law,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 229-247
63
John Finnis, Aquinas, op. cit., p. 267
64
Herbert A Simon, Administrative Behaviour: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative
Organizations, (4th Ed.), NY: The Free Press, 1997
62
32 | P a g e
Robert P George and Morals Laws. So much for the conceptual warrants, even if
drawn from thomism. Still, whether such QAMod programmes will work as I here suggest
they do needs to be corroborated by empirical evidence, of course. And such empirical
evidence is amongst other reasons important for issues of accountability: one talks of
evidence based policy or evidence informed policy making within and outside of education.
If the case study on Singapore (earlier) is indication, then we can believe participants in such
QA programmes do in fact change their behaviours, even if another possible response is for
participants to reject the programme altogether, and rebuke it with resentment, and to not take
the validation programme seriously. However, consider this: any such empirical evidence for
the presence of good reasons occasioning our desired epistemic and moral conversions would
of course be the very warrants and justifications submitted for validation. The participants of
any such QAMod programmes are also at the same time the researchers of the programme,
because: if the research question revolves around the success or failure of such QAMod
programmes, the validation procedures would tell. The validation processes might reveal that
QAMod do not work, although given the documented experience with Quality Assurance
tools, we would rather expect the contrary—at least with school participants who have not yet
left such-wise managed systems but rather thrive or at the least survive. In the latter case,
one should expect a kind of welcome empirical circularity about such QAMod programmes,
which is that participants themselves try to prove the very things the QAMod claims it
cultivates in the participants. In a sense, like a self-fulfilling prophesy, therefore, the very
participants involved in the programme themselves “fabricate” and supply the “data”, which
would be the “evidence” for the QAMod’s success to the extent that their submission of the
validation package is successfully validated. Like the self-evaluating school participants who
are researchers through producing the “data”, external validators also serve simultaneously as
researchers, because they take given “data” and corroborate the validity or not of these ethical
warrants for school decisions. In a sense their role as researchers is more significant, since
they determine objectively, through their validation, whether or not there is “evidence” (being
the sound ethical warrants submitted for validation) of moral transformation, or at least, the
occasion for such moral transformation.
Such “empirical evidence” can further or support work on the pedagogy of morality in
natural law theory which has for the most part been speculative, but quite compatible with
this paper’s pedagogical assumptions. For example, a prominent theorist working on natural
law theory who has written substantially on the pedagogy of morality is Robert P. George,
and on the topic of the law’s pedagogy, George asserts in his Making Men Moral: Civil
Liberties and Public Morality that “a sound morals law provides a person whose reason and
will may be overwhelmed by powerful temptation…with a countervailing motive not to
succumb to the tempting vice…To the extent that reason is in control of his deliberation, he
can participate in the moral good of choosing uprightly in the face of temptation to choose
immorally, and can do so without adverting to the law and its threat of punishment.”65 Like
me (and March), George assumes that pedagogical technologies like the law can motivate
people to avoid evil and do good, but at the same time, does not destroy one’s capacity to be
65
Robert P George, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002, p 227 (Italics Mine).
33 | P a g e
intelligently motivated by practical reasons. Any such assertion that a prescriptive technology
like the application of morals laws (or a QAMod programme, for that matter) preserves and
hence strengthens participants’ capacity to choose ethically and hence reasonably can
profitably be corroborated by precisely the empirical evidence that can be collected at various
iterative stages of the application of the legal or managerial technology; when the subjects of
our pedagogical technologies manage to develop defensibly sound ethical warrants for
actions consistent with the prescriptions of the morals law, or in support of their leadership
decisions, then it is clear that his practical deliberation is in the very least conscious of the
very practical reasons he has developed, and therefore, the belief that he was not choosing
(ethically) merely out of fear or because of pressures under duress but because he had good
reasons to do so becomes more credible. If there is now evidence that he has presented
himself with good practical reasons, the suggestion that his will “can be” governed by these
practical reasons becomes believable; whereas, short of these practical reasons qua evidence,
then his (upright) behaviour, even if consistent with the norms of sound reason, remains
suspect of being motivated by something non-rational, since one begs the question: “where
then are those reasonable deliberations that he could have been guided by?” Certainly, unlike
the case of schools, any effort to track the presence or lack of good reasons for choices is
more complex in the case of citizens under a morals law, and may perhaps be practically
impossible. Nevertheless—and here is the catch—for those citizens who are educators, and
who are parents of students, or merely members of the community where the school or
academy is situated and have therefore a stake in the kinds of students that emerge from that
institution to function in their community, or any other stakeholder of that institute—their
own participation and consultative involvement in an QAMod research programme, say, will
also at the same time supply something in evidence for the presence of or lack of practical
reasonableness in their choices when they behave consistently with morals laws. This is true
to the extent that the ethical warrants developed in consultation with these public educational
stakeholders make references to these morals laws, which is not at all irrelevant to
educational policy thinking. After all, school leaders may need to address the schools’
policies in relation to rules and regulations in the larger political context. For example, when
justifying its sexuality education programmes and the choices it makes in relation to these
programmes, school leaders may in consultation with select representative members of the
community supply warrants that support not merely its own programmes, but also the very
morals law which is found to be consistent or criticize an unjust morals law and offer reasons
for its own programme which contradict the unjust morals law; indeed the courageous
criticism of morals laws and social policies may be a very visible indicator of a practical
reason-ableness that is not deflected by various emotional pressures and unpopularity.
Therefore, a schools’ QAMod programme completed in consultation with relevant members
of the public who are educational stakeholders offers evidence not only for the claims that I
make in this paper regarding these school leaders, but simultaneous also offer something in
evidence for claims that George makes in relation to public persons under morals laws.
Sabina Alkire, OPHI and the Capabilities School. In the larger social science, Sabina
Alkire’s cutting edge work in welfare economics at the Oxford Poverty and Human
Development Institute (OPHI) at Queen Elizabeth House, at the Department of Economics of
34 | P a g e
the University of Oxford must be the closest to the framework proposed in this paper. By
integrating John Finnis’ account of those seven (or so) incommensurable basic goods as
“dimensions of capabilities” in the sense conceptualized by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen,
Alkire’s hope is to offer a new measure of poverty in terms of of these “dimensions”, or
component aspects of a situation, (particularly of human development).66 As Alkire rightly
puts it, poverty has been defined along narrow economic dimensions, and such a plurality of
dimensions that are other than economic provide a more wholesome way of articulating
privations, precisely as human flourishing suffers poverty in many ways, besides the
economic. Measuring situations against such a plural yardstick of dimensions gives us a
better picture of how a place or peoples is deprived of aspects of human flourishing, even if it
may be enjoy various economic goods. The choice of Finnis’ basic goods is intentional, and
Alkire believes doing so satisfies certain qualities which Sen says should be true of such
“dimensions”. Following Sen, Alkire prefers “dimensions” that are not too specified, for very
pragmatic reasons. Dimensions that lack specific metaphysical commitments and specific
moral implications are incomplete but such incompleteness is welcome: such nonspecification makes these proposals of dimensions more acceptable to users across a larger
spectrum, who we cannot, surely, expect in this day and age to agree on the metaphysical or
ethical specificities.67 Nonetheless, such an evaluative framework, even if welcome for these
user-friendly reasons (helpful for ideas to travel, doubtless), compromise too much that is
otherwise significant for a research project to track development, and I would argue needs to
be complemented by a research project like ours, which attempts not just to track a-ethical
dimensions but the very “dimension” called ethics taken in its fullest sense.
Perhaps the deficiencies of Alkire’s framework can be surfaced by first noting an
internal tension. And this is that: although Alkire wishes “dimensions” to be unspecified, she
includes amongst these dimensions “coherent self-determination, or practical reason”.68
Indeed, if self-determination is coherent, then her rendition of that dimension as “practical
reason” is inaccurate, because there can be incoherent employment of practical reasons. Thus
the dimension is properly, “practical reasonableness” as Finnis has conceptualized it. If the
dimension is practical reasonableness (rather than the mere employment of practical reasons)
then by definition, the identification of other dimensions without further specifying the
ethical deliberation that drives these achievements, such as the realization of the other basic
goods or the mere employment of practical reasons, speaks insufficiently about the dimension
called “practical reasonableness” (i.e., morality or immorality) of a certain peoples or places
or projects. This is because morally indicative reasoning or practical reasoning, is the whole
chain of reasoning that forms the proposal for the chosen course of action, detailing the
means and the ends at every single stage of the complete action,69 and until there is a sound
See generally, Sabina Alkire, Valuing Freedoms: Sen’s Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005
67
Sabina Alkire, “Dimensions of Human Development”, World Development, Vol. 30 (2), pp. 181-205 at 184
68
See Appendix A in Sabina Alkire, “Dimensions of Human Development” op. cit.
69
Hence, what determines its moral is neither what one hopes or desires, nor even the consequences foreseen or
not, but the practical reasoning containing the rational plan of means-towards-the-end-goal. See John Finnis
“Intention in Tort Law” in Philosophical Foundations of Tort Law, David G Owen (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2001, pp. 229-247
66
35 | P a g e
chain of reasoning, the mere grasping (by way of the first principles) that there are these
plurality of basic goods to seek is “not yet moral”, as John Finnis has pointed out. This is
because one can still seek these goods badly, and by employing practical reasons (but
unsound ones), such as, say, by a Machiavellian employment of an evil means for a good
ends—all of which Alkire understands clearly: sound practical reasoning requires not merely
that we acknowledge there is a (or this) plurality of goods qua ends, but also that when
seeking these goods qua ends, every means (or intermediate end) is not an instance of the
opposite bad.70 In other words, the very inclusion of “practical reasonableness” as a measure
resists the resistance of specificity. If on the other hand, the dimension called “practical
reasonableness” is to be measured, then some specificity concerning the ethics of practical
deliberation is required in order for the researcher to judge whether there is “practical
reasonableness”. In the end, either Sen’s rule to resist specificity has to give way, or else
Finnis’ dimension called “practical reasonableness” has to be dropped. (In other words,
Sen’s claim that: the specification of ethical commitments constitutive of the good life is “not
inconsistent with the capability approach…but is not, by any means, required by it”71 is false.)
Surely, it is Sen’s rule that needs to be dropped and not the dimension of “practical
reasonableness”. “Development” in its fullest sense needs arguably to include by definition
the sound deliberation which attends the quest for the variety of basic goods, since being
practically reasonable is a basic good. No sound theorist would call a place developed if it
enjoys a variety of these other dimensions but achieved and continues to achieve these
immorally and unjustly. Do not misunderstand! Even with respect this dimension of
“practical reasonableness”, Alkire’s work as it stands is already and truly a very important
step forward in social science just as she challenges the narrow set of dimensions in
economic science, and broadens it in line with Finnis’ list of basic goods. Thanks to her
framework, it becomes possible to surface privations in a large number of those various
dimensions (where there are), which may hint at some form of practically unreasonable (and
hence, immoral) neglect of the plurality of goods. This possible immorality is something that
could not have emerged previously under the narrow economic dimensions of development—
but the immorality is merely possible, and is not if these deprivations were un-intentional.
Still, whether or not these are intentional cannot be discerned unless and until the
deliberations that shaped policies and plans were articulated. Therefore, for a framework that
concerns itself with identifying or measuring “development” in the sense which includes
“practical reasonableness” as one of its dimensions and so takes ethical behaviors of persons
into account, ticking off the enjoyment of the other basic goods will not be enough: one needs
also to tick off the box which says, “sound practical reasoning”—and this box can only be
ticked off if there is evaluative specification of what is practically reasonable or ethical, based
on the complete string of practical reason. And it is in this respect that our research
programme is significant and complements the work at OPHI, since we target the complete
string of practical reasoning, surface that and evaluate that. Such a “complete string of
practical reasoning”, if thorough, may of course detail not merely ethically specific
commitments, but also the specific relevant metaphysical commitments of such deliberation.
70
71
Sabina Alkire, Valuing Freedoms, op. cit., pp. 106-112
Sen cited in Sabina Alkire, “Dimensions of Human Development”, op. cit., p. 184
36 | P a g e
Perhaps it is less user-friendly than Alkire’s original system, but it would not tradeoff the
possibility of measuring such an important dimension. The question here is, do we want a
usable but ultimately uninformative framework with respect the dimension called practical
reasonableness, or do we wish to enable others to use a more challenging but truly revealing
framework? Perhaps one can begin with Alkire’s original framework, but my fear is that,
even if it reports well of places and peoples, the really significant dimension called practical
reasonableness is not measured, and the picture of development remains very distorted.
Hence our aspiration must be to arrive at a place where we can begin to use the QAMod
framework, where there is, contra Sen, the use of a framework which has as little nonspecification of ethical and metaphysical commitments as is possible. This implies, of course,
working out what is rationally entailed by the first principles of practical reason, both
ethically and metaphysically, based on which one judges the fulfillment or not of the
dimension of practical reasonableness.
There is something else to be said of Alkire’s research work at OPHI. It is, and still is,
at the end of the day, a purely descriptive project. Over the several recent years of its
important work, OPHI has continued to focus on developing measures to capture the various
dimensions of capabilities. As it aims to do that, Alkire is all the same humbly aware of the
difficulties and limitations of the research. In order to have respondents consider and report
whether they enjoy the various “dimensions” of values (or basic goods), respondents are
shown a list of these dimensions, and it appears that, instead of discerning the phenomenon as
it is, this seems to prescriptively interfere with the phenomenon. She contemplates these
methodological pains and responds to them:
“[the] method of presentation used for qualitative ranking—that is, ranking
impacts according to the ‘dimension’ of value with which they were
predominantly associated—‘imposes’ the taxonomy of the evaluators on
participants, and/or suggests to them the values they ‘should’ have…[However,
t]he dimensions were introduced when they were not mentioned spontaneously
because it was hypothesized that participants have ‘assumed’ that facilitators
were not interested in this kind of impact. Therefore while this introduction may
lead to biased information (for then participants might ‘generate’ impacts in order
to ‘please’ the facilitator), the absence of strategic questions may also have
included a bias, which the strategic questions aimed to correct.”72
Alkire’s response is thoughtful; her point is that, introducing these dimensions gets
participants to report dimensional impacts which truly are there, but which could have been
under-reported in cases where participants imagined researchers were not interested in these,
seeing that these dimensions were not mentioned. But I am not certain if it is persuasive: it
appears to me a tu quoque; i.e., “like those who introduce dimensions leading to overreporting (which she acknowledges), those who do not introduce these dimensions also have
a set of biases to address—the tendency to under-report impacts—and so are no better off.”
Should she, however, adopt the “design bias” as our QAMod research programme does, then
72
Sabina Alkire, Valuing Freedoms, op. cit., pp 292-293
37 | P a g e
these issues are completely side-stepped and overcome, as we have argued above. In which
case, such over-reporting is in the relevant sense welcome, and the researcher’s basic
orientation is indeed prescriptive and to impose values unashamedly on peoples; the research
therefore acknowledges that its respondents experience interference and are thus changed by
it, and, that the project is not at all a merely descriptive one aimed at measuring an inert
status quo. Perhaps, then, our research framework points at, if not a better then at the least an
alternative and less troublesome way forward.
Graduate Studies in Education: A Scientific Semio-ethic Curriculum
A departing thought regarding the training of graduate students in educational research.
Given all of the above, it is not impossible to imagine professional graduate programmes
which have as students in education, some of whom may be frequent participants as school
leaders of such self-evaluation projects, all of them daringly concerned with the fully
prescriptive, examining through their research thesis the soundness of ethically relevant
warrants for various educational policies and decisions, and where these are found wanting,
developing sounder ones, which are then fully relevant to the QAMods and usable for
guiding school level and nation-wide policy decisions, especially those capable of being
challenged as controversial (indeed this is where such research is so important). Professional
graduate programmes for such students, one imagines, will have a substantial component in
philosophy, ethics, applied ethics, and perhaps even metaphysics and epistemology to the
extent that these are related to axiological discussions.73 And to the extent that history and
literature may be marshalled to fortify by abduction practical reasoning with examples and
analogies or to liberate the same from various blind conventions respectively (for instance, in
the manner that has been done here in this paper), discussions of relevant texts based in these
disciplines of the liberal arts may be offered as auxiliary and elective courses.
Such kinds of “research”, at once educational and semio-ethical, modelled after the
type we have here in these two chapters, could have several things in its favour, in
comparison with contemporary educational research work. Firstly, they can beneficially
retrieve interesting but neglected ideas buried deep in ancient texts and histories, and then
make them available, after rigorous testing against some established body of knowledge, to
contemporary policy thinking in education and beyond. One may have noticed that, like
typical educational research, there is a literature review, a list of research question(s) or a
problem identification, followed by the generation of the hypothesis and finally some kind of
corroboration, attaining therefore an appropriate level of scientific rigor—only in this case
the latter would rely less on the empirical corroboration of data and more on the comparative
analysis of scholarly texts. Surely, this will not replace traditional empirical educational
research, and may not be suitable as a method for addressing all kinds of research questions,
but it may suitable, firstly, for the exploration of solutions that have a “twist” in the sense
that one retrieves ideas that are innovative in relation to current logics, cultures or ethical
mores, and secondly, and more significantly, it would be suitable for the development of
those very ethical or practically reasonable precepts for guiding educational thinking, which
73
See for instance, Jude Chua Soo Meng, “Things to do on the Play-Ground” op. cit.
38 | P a g e
the collection of data whether quantitative or qualitative cannot in principle yield, because the
right and the wrong is not the dictate of a popular vote. In this way it addresses the culpable
gaps that are left unaddressed because un-address-able by “empirical education research”
supported by public funds amounting to (some boast, as medals tagged to their curriculum
vitae’s) millions of dollars and tailored to fit the ministry’s majestic aspirations, resulting in
that which often only corroborates what common sense suggests, thus seeming, to this
layman, troublingly ‘invisible’. Otherwise, our kind of research project should also be
welcome to students with a liberal arts background and who have the appropriate training and
disposition to engage a tradition or body of ideas that is more conceptual and hence more
difficult to access. We can even think about certification and recognition. For instance, such
research work, being directly relevant to one’s professional practice, could be an “institution
focused study” situated within a professional doctorate programme, or else could be
presented in a form that could, earn a professional qualification from the College of Teachers,
say, or be submitted as evidence for satisfy Fellowship election requirements.
39 | P a g e