THE POST-MODERN FRAMEWORK OF THINKING AS APPLIED TO

ETHICS

By Prof. Restie Allan A. Puno, MAEd:Soc.Sci., LPT

Dean, College of Arts and Humanities, Palawan State University

What is Epistemology?

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy which deals with the study of knowledge. It is

known as the philosophy of knowledge. It asks questions such as what is the nature of human
knowledge? How do we know? How do we know that we know? Epistemologists concern
themselves with a number of tasks, which we might sort into two categories:

First, we must determine the nature of knowledge; that is, what does it mean to say that
someone knows, or fails to know, something? This is a matter of understanding what knowledge
is, and how to distinguish between cases in which someone knows something and cases in which
someone does not know something. While there is some general agreement about some aspects
of this issue, we shall see that this question is much more difficult than one might imagine.

Second, we must determine the extent of human knowledge; that is, how much do we, or
can we, know? How can we use our reason, our senses, the testimony of others, and other
resources to acquire knowledge? Are there limits to what we can know? For instance, are some
things unknowable? Is it possible that we do not know nearly as much as we think we do?
Should we have a legitimate worry about skepticism, the view that we do not or cannot know
anything at all?
While this article provides on overview of the important issues, it leaves the most basic questions
unanswered; epistemology will continue to be an area of philosophical discussion as long as
these questions remain.

With concern our present task, there were two well-observed epistemological frameworks
applied by scientists and philosophers as to the question, “How do we learn”?

1. Modern Framework of Learning

2. Postmodern Framework of Learning

Modern Framework for Learning towards Specialized Knowledge: The Old Paradigm

Modern epistemology or theory of knowledge claims that there is an objective truth that
constitutes the reality in the world. This truth is known by the subject-knower through the act of
the mind or cognition. The person learns about the content through the method of learning. This
structure of knowledge based on modernist thinking is shown in the following figure:
 FIGURE 2
Structure of Knowledge according to Modern Theory

SUBJECT COGNITION OBJECT

The Knower The Act of Mind The Known

Reality
WORLD
Truth

PERSON METHOD CONTENT

Learning of Learning of Learning

Objective truth could be studied and known in the various disciplines or fields of learning
assumed to be distinct from one another. Each discipline has its own method of knowing about
specialized truth out there in the world. Modernism is the model on which much of the
educational system in the Philippines is based (Hornedo, 1999). The structure of knowledge
according to modern theory may be illustrated in this schema:

FIGURE 3
Modern Framework for Learning towards the Specialization of Knowledge
FIELD (Discipline) METHOD (Process) CONTENT (Subject-Matter)
Philosophy Rational (Mind alone) Ultimate reality of all things
Physics Scientific (Observation, hypothesis etc.) Physical phenomena
Mathematics Analytic (Computation) Number and their relations
Sociology Positivist (Survey, statistics etc.) Social phenomena
Theology Dogmatic (Bible, magisterium etc.) God and human beings

Philosophy deals with the ultimate reality of all things through the aid of natural human
reason alone. Physics is about physical phenomena like motion, electricity and gravitation known
by means of the scientific method which includes observation, formulation of hypothesis and its
validation by experiments, and then the creation of scientific theory and law. Each discipline
discovers truths about the world which are sometimes in conflict with the truths discovered by
the other fields. Due to the discovery of different truths, the relations of the various areas of
knowledge have never been amicable. Disagreements among the disciplines led to the biased
assumption of the superiority of one field over the others. As to who has the best claim for
truth—the philosophers, the scientists, the artists, the theologians, the politicians or whoever—
becomes a matter of discourse and power-play by the prevailing institutions in the society. And
this finally results to the production of knowledge and truth based on postmodernist thinking.

Aside from the adverse interrelation of the various fields of learning, there is a tendency
towards specializing the disciplines. The contents of learning are categorized into smaller and
smaller units, so that the fields have been gradually divided and subdivided as they continue to
evolve throughout the ages. The direction of this progress is shown in the intellectual history of
Western thought.
 The history of the advancement of human knowledge, seen from the framework of
modern paradigm for knowing, moves towards specialization. Started by the ancient Greek
thinkers, speculations on the ultimate nature of things in the universe were collectively called
“Philosophy” that deals with the transcendental ideas called as “The One,” “The True,” “The
Good” and “The Beautiful”. They were the same subject-matters studied by the Scholastic
philosophers of the Middle Ages whose chief concern was Theology.

During the modern times when the various fields of learning have been increasingly
systematized, Philosophy formally branched out into Metaphysics, Cosmology, Theodicy,
Epistemology, Logic, Ethics and Aesthetics. The discipline of Aesthetics has been divided into
Philosophy of Beauty, Philosophy of Art, and Philosophy of Art Criticism. While the study of
Art has been subdivided into Fine Arts, Practical Arts, Folk Arts, Digital Arts; into History of
Art, Theory of Art, Practice of Art; into European Art, American Art, Asian Art; into Chinese
Art, Indian Art, Philippine Art; into Philippine Pre-Colonial Art, Philippine Art during the
Spanish Period, Philippine Indigenous Art; into Ifugao Art, Maranao Art, Tiboli Art; into Art of
the Tinalak, Representational Patterns in Tinalak Design, Bird Motif in the Tinalak. The other
fields have similar historical line of constant intellectual dissections: from Cosmology, Natural
Philosophy, Physics, Theoretical Physics into Theoretical Astrophysics; from Natural Science,
Biology, Zoology, Entomology into Myrmecology; and so on and on up to the tiniest details.

Having been influenced by an educational model that gears towards specialization, the
teachers of the various disciplines of learning tend to teach more and more, about less and less.
The negative consequence of this tendency is the fragmentation of human knowledge on the part
of the students. A student learns a lot about a little thing, but not knowing about its place in the
larger scheme of human life. For example, an Art Appreciation teacher may discuss the bird-like
pattern in the design of the Tinalak cloth, but the students does not learn about the religious
beliefs of the Tiboli people and the dream-weavers who created those designs, which are
knowledge better understood in the area of Anthropology or Sociology. Or one history professor
may have an accounting of the content of Rizal’s pocket, but his students don’t realize its
significance to the grand narratives of nation building or the formation of Filipino identity.
Indeed, there are scholars who become experts in one discipline, but totally paralyzed in all the
others.

Specialized learning is reinforced nowadays by easy access to Information Technology,

where anyone could simply Google the meticulous details about anything in the world. Students
gain knowledge about the subject, without passing through the preliminary and general
understanding of it. They fail to situate the subject within the ambit of a much broader contexts
of society, culture, religion, politics or economy, and to connect it to relevant issues such as
nationality, ethnicity, personhood (pagkatao), race or gender.

Postmodern Framework and Interdisciplinary Approach towards Integrated Knowledge

: The New Paradigm

The 1960’s marked a revolutionary era in the progress of human thought. According to
the philosopher John Francois Lyotard (1984), starting that decade, we were no longer in the
modern age, but in the period after the modern, in a word, “postmodern”. Postmodernity is the
general condition of human, social and cultural life of every person at the present times (Hornedo,
1999).
From the perspective of postmodernity, the so-called “modern” is already old, because
the postmodern is the new thing. This is probably difficult to grasp by anyone new to this
concept. One should be reminded that “modern” is not a chronological term, it is rather a form of
consciousness. In fact, in the intellectual history of the Western civilization, the modern period
had began during the 1650’s, because people started to think differently from those of the
previous era. To say that we are in the modern world, actually means that we are thinking in the
manner of Modernism. But the modernist consciousness has already been superseded by a new
way of thinking which is Postmodernism. So we are presently in the postmodern world. But this
world has just began, because not everyone of us today thinks in postmodern way, but still
conditioned by the modern. Yet, there are people today who still think in the fashion of the
ancient and medieval times. Thus, postmodernism is a not a form of cognition that every person
nowadays share, but a condition of thinking that the human mind has achieved in the process of
its highest development as of the contemporary period.

As a way thinking, postmodernism asserts that there is one objective reality out there in
the world, but this reality can never be known by people because they are determined by their
own subjectivities, interests and prejudices. There are many truths concerning this reality brought
by the multiplicity of knowledge that people construct when they look at, and think about the
world. But people can see the world only from their own perspective, so that what they known
about the world is just a portion of it. People formulate different knowledge based on their
positionalities. As to which of these knowledge would count as “the truth,” depends on how
powerful are the people in various social institutions, such as the church or the state, to impose
their own knowledge upon the individual persons. The postmodern theory of knowledge is
illustrated in this figure.

FIGURE 4
The Postmodern Theory of Knowledge
 There are four different models that may be formulated through the interaction of the
different perspectives. First, they could respect one another by not interacting at all; this leads to
the total independence of perspectives but to the stagnancy of truth. Second, the different
positionalities could confront or clash against one another, resulting to the dissolution of truth.
And third, one point of view could impose its truth upon the other, leading to the privileging of
this truth held by the powerful who lays supreme, over the truth held by the weak who is silenced
and subordinated; this is the truth created by the narratives of colonialization and globalization,
and taken up in discourse analysis and deconstruction. And fourth, the various points of view
could be integrated with one another, leading to the production of collaborated and negotiated
truth, and the more perspectives intersect, to the construction of many encircling truths which
approximate the world. The last one is the model of integration adapted from postmodernist
thinking about education. This is also the ideal model of ecumenism in interreligious dialogue.

Another point of postmodernism is that it signals the end of intellectual history. It alleges
that everything that could be thought has already been thought about, and that all established
theories have already reached their highest development. This is seen with a sense of disgust by
the nihilists. But looking at postmodernism positively, it could be a good point for the greater
advancement of learning. The various fields of knowledge have no farther way to go on
independently of each other, but this means that they could be harmonized with one another! One
way of understanding postmodernist consciousness applied to education, therefore, is to see it as
an interdisciplinary approach to learning towards the integration of knowledge, as distinct from
modernist thinking as strictly disciplinal towards the specialization of knowledge. The
postmodern paradigm for learning is shown in the following schema:

FIGURE 5
Postmodern Framework and Interdisciplinary Approach
towards the Integration of Knowledge
 The interdisciplinary approach to liberal and general education, within the framework of
postmodern theory, results to the integration of knowledge and truth. Each discipline, advancing
knowledge of its own, moves towards one another in a unifying order. This approach is
described as making the student “see reality as one—that which has a mathematical aspect,
economic aspect, biological aspect, and so on, but always in an integrated unity.” It is “seeing the
forest” not the trees, “seeing the whole beyond the complex parts” (Flores 1996). This way,
interdisciplinarity creates a friendly atmosphere among the proponents of the different field of
learning. The philosophers, the scientists, the artists, the mathematicians, the theologians, the
historian, the politicians, and everyone else, interact with each other in a harmonious way which
leads towards the further construction of one, integrated truth.

Synthesis and Personal Reflection

I learned about postmodernism when I was a student. Having digested this philosophy, I
was appalled by a feeling of nihilism it implies in relation to the education I had been receiving.
So, the truths that I so dearly hold—truths about myself, about others, about the world, about
God—are merely constructs derived from the knowledge imposed upon me by the school, the
state, the church and other institutions in the society. The values that I have, the person that I am,
are merely products of the determinations by these institutions where I belong.

The realization that there was no objective truth inherent in the world, had made me ask
the question: What’s the point of studying? Gawa-gawa lang naman ang katotohanan, eh, bakit
mag-aaral pa ako! I was so overwhelmed by this postmodernist way of thinking that it has
became my guiding principle. I thought then that education had no lofty values to offer, such as
for knowing the truth, for cultivating moral virtues or for developing a person to his highest
potentials. It only had a practical value—a means for earning a living.

Then I became a teacher myself. And I practically used education to earn a living. I
handled mostly general education subjects in humanities and philosophy. Reflectively, every
time I was in the classroom, I felt happiness and fulfillment when I know that I was able to teach
the lessons well, and my students learned. This feeling gave me the impression that there must
really be something that I gained in education beyond the practical end of teaching, something
noble that concerns my own humanity. I began to have a deep conviction that what I share with
my students is the truth—the truth I acquired by myself, the truth I learned in school, the truth
written in great book, in fact, the truth of the whole human civilization of which I am a member.
I came to believe that the value of moral education, within the framework of postmodern
paradigm for learning, is the ability of the human race to work harmoniously together in
constructing the truths of the world.

This, finally, I think this is ultimate meaning of ethics framed within the postmodern
theory. Ethics is part of liberal education because it gives us a sense of human freedom! This
freedom means that we are not bounded by any moral truths inside or outside of us, we must
accept that there exists other truths which are worth thinking and considering about, but at the
same time, we are free to create our moral truths honed from the varied frameworks and
principles we have. However, this is not the kind of moral freedom based on the philosophy of
existentialism which defines truth from the point of view only of the individual person. The
postmodern meaning of freedom in the context of ethics, is the capacity to construct integrated
truths from the harmonizing and unifying knowledge that the whole humanity have learned all
throughout the ages. And I’m glad that I am an ethics teacher participating in the creation of
these truths.

Bibliography

Hornedo, Florentino H. “The Condition of the Present: Postmodernity” in UST Journal of

Graduate Research, Manila: UST Press, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1999.

Lyotard, John Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report of Knowledge, trans. Geoff
Bennington & Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Ulich, Robert. The History of Educational Thought. New York: American Book Company, 1950.

Wilds, Elmer Harrison & Kenneth V. Lottich. The Foundations of Modern Education. New York:
Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1970.