Keywords
mental eye
learning as reproduction
Richard Rorty
Hans Jonas
How to Cite
Abstract
Since Plato a metaphor has dominated western thought. This metaphor depicts reason as possessing a 'mental eye‘ that apprehends truths in the same way in which our perceptual vision reflects and reproduces things. The visual metaphor is accompanied by an objectivist doctrine in which humans beings grasp knowledge, instead of constructing it. The problem emerges when we forget that it is only a metaphor and begins to believe that it is an accurate description of how we learn. This ocular metaphor has reinforced a passive view of learning which is responsible for the way in which we have designed education as a process of reproduction. Why was vision, and not some other perceptual sense, employed? It is argued that vision contains some elements which are not found in the other senses. To conclude, the possibility of portraying learning by non representative means is examined.
How to cite:
Suárez-Silverio, E. J. (2011). La metáfora ocular y representativa del pensamiento y la educación. Pedagogía, 42(1), 79-102. Retrieved from https://revistas.upr.edu/index.php/educacion/article/view/16618
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