What is it to be clear? And will that question have the same answer in science, poetry, and philosophy? This paper offers a taxonomy of clarity, before focusing on two notions that are pertinent to the notions of clarity in science, poetry, and, in particular, philosophy. It argues that “scientific clarity,” which is marked by its reliance on technical terms, is, though often appropriate, not the only way in which something can be clear. In particular, poetry entirely eschews technical terms—but (...) can nonetheless be crystal clear. Poetry achieves this clarity by sensitivity to the richness of language: rhythm, ambiguity, and so on. The paper argues that some philosophy uses language in this same way to achieve its philosophical ends. Accordingly, we should allow that this is a legitimate philosophical method and should not judge the clarity of such philosophy by the standards of scientific clarity. (shrink)

This article explores how different philosophical models and pictures of learning can become dogmatic and disguise other conceptions of learning. With reference to a passage from St. Paul, I give a sense of the dogmatic teleology that underpins philosophical assumptions about learning. The Pauline assumption is exemplified through a variety of models of learning as conceptualised by Israel Scheffler. In order to show how the Paulinian dogmatism can give rise to radically different pictures of learning, the article turns to St. (...) Augustine’s and Robert Brandom’s examples of language learning, and to general strands in scholarship on moral education. Dewey’s view of childhood immaturity and the problem of adult maturity are used as first attempt at a counter picture to the idea that learning must have an end. The article takes Dewey’s idea further by suggesting how the Zen-Buddhist idea of killing the Buddha and Wittgenstein’s method of destroying pictures work on the dogmatic focus on uses of ‘learning’ that assume ends. In conclusion, the article suggests three possible uses of ‘learning’—learning from wonder, intransitive learning and passionate learning—that do not assume that learning has or must have a teleological end. (shrink)