The next main meeting of the Middle Way Network will be on Sun 2nd August at 7pm UK time on Zoom. This is the second of the series looking successively at five principles of the Middle Way (scepticism, provisionality, incrementality, agnosticism and integration), followed by three levels of practice (desire, meaning and belief).
There’ll be a short talk on the provisionality, followed by questions and discussion in regionalised breakout groups. Some other regionalised groups will meet at other times. If you’re interested in joining us but are not already part of the Network, please see the general Network page to sign up. To catch up on the previous session, on scepticism, please see this post.
There is already a short introductory video (8 minutes) on provisionality as part of Middle Way Philosophy, which is embedded below. You might like to watch this for an initial orientation before the session.
Here is the video of the talk and Q&A at the actual meeting:
Provisionality
Provisionality is the quality of being provisional in our judgements – that is, of being capable of changing them in the light of new experience. It may seem an obvious concept, particularly for those in the sciences, but in fact the word is rarely used, and the quality is often taken for granted rather than explicitly cultivated. As the video explains, provisionality involves both having a critical awareness of the limitations of the justification of your beliefs (through scepticism), and also having awareness of alternatives (through optionality). Optionality can be cultivated through the arts, or through any other activity that broadens our experience and available meaning.
Science relies on a quality of provisionality in those who practise it to make good its claims of being open to revision, but it tends to rely on socially organised checking mechanisms rather than explicitly cultivating that quality in individuals. Individuals also depend on provisionality to be able to make appropriate judgements in a variety of circumstances, to adapt and to meet their needs at a variety of levels (see the video on adapting to conditions for more on this). It may also seem to be a crucial quality in religious practice, but has rarely been explicitly identified or supported in religious contexts, even when sceptical arguments have been used (as they have in Buddhism). The Buddha’s parable of the raft is one potential exception. It is time that provisionality was explicitly identified and cultivated as a vital quality in all traditions.
Some suggested reflection questions:
Do you often have chance to pause for reflection, so as to be more critically aware of your assumptions? When does this happen, or when could you make it happen?
Think of examples of belief that you take for granted in everyday life. Are you aware of possible criticisms of those beliefs?
If you live a very social life, do you take opportunities for solitude so as to gain perspective on what groups expect from you?
Do you have any ways of cultivating weak links, through the arts, or other ways of stimulating the imagination or broadening experience? If not, how could you develop these?
Middle Way Philosophy IV, section 2 gives a fuller account of optionality, adaptiveness, and a range of other features of provisionality: See pdf of the Omnibus Edition on Researchgate.
In my job teaching physics to young people from ages 11-18, I often encounter unhelpful absolutisations that act as barriers to the students being able to address conditions. For example, if a student is finding it hard to do the work that I expect them to be able to do, they may say things like “But I am no good at physics!” (absolutising the subject) or “But physics is impossible to understand!” (absolutising the object). Either way, the student who holds these kinds of beliefs has their judgement clouded by the delusions created by conceiving things in absolute terms. If instead, the student can understand the situation incrementally then they’re more likely to be able to follow the most basic imperative in Middle Way philosophy by making judgements about their learning on the basis of beliefs that are as free from delusion as possible. In this article, I explore the connection between the Middle Way practice of incrementality and the ‘mindset’ model in teaching practice.
Two mindsets
The mindset model in education was first proposed by Carol Dweck and Ellen Leggett in their 1998 paper A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. In the formulation of this model that is well known in modern educational circles, absolutising one’s self (e.g. “But I am no good at physics!”) is a judgement made by a student with a ‘fixed mindset’. The graphic by Nigel Holmes (below) sums up this belief using the phrase “Intelligence is static”. In my example, the student believes that their intelligence with regards to physics problems is static and cannot be further developed. This maintains a self-reinforcing feedback loop, where the student – in order to save face – avoids challenges, gives up easily when encountering obstacles, sees effort as fruitless and thus ignores useful criticism. They feel threatened by the success of others (whom the student regards as innately and absolutely “Good at physics”) and through a lack of engagement they fail to make the kind of progress with learning physics that they would otherwise make.
The second, more productive mindset is referred to as a ‘growth mindset’. It does not represent the opposite absolutisation (i.e. believing that “I am good at physics!” or “Physics is easy!” – which are really just another kind of fixed but positive mindset) but a middle way which recognises that intelligence can be developed, but only if the subject is willing to allow it to develop. Avoiding the fixed mindset means that a student will embrace (appropriate) challenges, persist in the face of setbacks (to a reasonable extent), and to see effort as the path to mastery. A more adequate self-correcting feedback loop is established because the student is open to learning from useful criticism, and they can find lessons and inspiration from the success of others. By experiencing progress in their study of physics they have a greater sense of being responsible for their ability to learn, avoiding the absolute of determinism.
Why do students believe in a fixed mindset?
As usual, the reasons for the entrenchment of a fixed mindset are complex. However, one really obvious factor is the attitude of influential members of earlier generations: parents, teachers, voices in the media. When some people first discover that I am employed as a physics teacher they seem to be quite happy to immediately tell me that they “were never any good at physics” or that they “dropped physics as soon as they could when they were at school”. I don’t get the impression they’re doing this to avoid feeling intimidated by the knowledge and understanding that I have that presumably they don’t. It appears acceptable to them to believe that people either ‘get’ physics or they don’t – and this sidesteps having to consider whether they were taught in a competent way, or whether they made the necessary effort to learn physics when they were being taught. It may be that they never saw the relevance of understanding physics (which, up to some age, they were compelled to study) and that they’ve never noticed any adverse effects of a lack of physics in their lives so far.
There are also the gender-related expectations communicated (wittingly, or unwittingly) to young people, which vary in their precise details but seem to be well represented in the stereotype of physics and engineering as being “boys’ subjects”. There have been studies of the factors behind gender-imbalance in the take-up of certain A-level subjects in schools in England and Wales, and I’ve been involved in a minor way with the Institute of Physics’ Improving gender balance project which is investigating the effectiveness of different strategies which aim to improve the balance in subjects with a disproportionate number of boys (or girls!). I’ve not done any formal analysis of the numbers of boys and girls who tell me that they’re “No good at physics!” or they think that “Physics is too difficult.” but I certainly hear it from both boys and girls, although perhaps slightly more often from girls.
A third thing that encourages the fixed mindset is the way that famous physicists are presented to students as ‘geniuses’, both in popular culture and perhaps unwittingly also within school education, where we should perhaps know better. Albert Einstein is the classic example. The problem with the genius model of excellence in science is that it reinforces the idea that you have to be innately special to excel at physics, and that it is only a very few people who are lucky enough to have this rare talent. Einstein once made the modest claim that “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” This kind of remark that hints at a growth mindset gets lost in the hype and mythos surrounding Einstein the eccentric genius, the ‘one of a kind’ plaudits, which seem to be so much more palatable to the general public.
Cultivating a growth mindset in the classroom
How, then, can I encourage students to believe the growth mindset rather than the fixed mindset? One way is to model a growth mindset myself. At the time of writing, we are five weeks into the new school year and I’m still struggling to accurately remember the names of all the children that I’ve not taught in previous years. The most acute case is my science class of 11 year-olds, who are completely new to the school. I am making a point of explaining to them how I’m going about remembering their names, as it isn’t something that comes easily to me. I’m modelling the growth mindset in action by embracing the challenge with good humour (I’ve got to learn their names, so I might as well have fun doing it), I’m persisting in the face of setbacks (keeping on trying to use their names, even when I get it wrong so often), I’m showing that I’m making an effort (refusing their help until I really really need it, and then encouraging clues rather than just supplying the forgotten name) and I’m learning from their criticism (which more recently has involved them suggesting helpful mnemonics). They’ve helped in this by providing an environment in which it is safe for me to fail over and over again, and by praising my effort rather than any innate ability to remember names with ease.
Providing opportunities for failure to occur in a safe way so that students can learn that (repeated) failure is usually a necessary step towards better understanding a subject. The earlier this can be put into practice, the better – I meet a lot of students (even the older ones, who are working at quite a high level of achievement in physics) who would rather not try at all than try and encounter failure. A classic example of this is students sitting and waiting for me (or someone else) to reveal “the correct answer” to a problem that they are supposed to be trying to solve themselves. A superficial examination of the reasons for this yields answers like “Well, there’s no point me writing stuff down if it is wrong!”.
A third technique involves making careful use of the way that I speak to students about the inherent challenge in the process of learning. The most useful advice I’ve had about this is about appending the word ‘yet’ to fixed mindset phrases that students use: for example, “I don’t get this” becomes “I don’t get this yet” or “I’m not good enough to do the exam” becomes “I’m not yet good enough to do the exam”. The word ‘yet’ is not essential, of course, as can be seen from the example of how “There’s no way I can do this” can become “I can’t see a way of doing this right now.” This more or less seems to amount to skilful use of provisionality markers, as previously discussed in one of Robert’s blog posts.
A fourth involves incrementalising absolutes by persistent questioning to go from the general to the specific. For example, a student who comes to a revision lesson may say “I don’t understand anything in physics!”, to which I respond “Give me an example of something you don’t understand.” and so on until you’ve gone from a blanket rejection of the whole subject to something quite specific, like not realising that a term like ‘resultant force’ just means something like the ‘overall force’, rather than being a new type of force in addition to things like friction, weight, air resistance and so on.
A final simple practice involves a general ‘no hands up’ policy during teacher-led questioning in the classroom. I’ve been amazed at the difference this simple technique makes. Previously, with children putting their hands up to indicate that they want to be picked to answer a question, those who considered themselves to be ‘no good’ at the subject could opt out by not ever putting their hand up. The division between those who considered themselves ‘no good’ and those who thought that they could answer would be reinforced in a feedback loop. A better practice is to make it clear that anyone could be called upon to respond out loud, to pose the question, to give time for all to think about it (no hands up) and then to ask a specific student to share their thoughts. It also helps to praise the effort made, to valorise trying even if it involved failure, and not to praise a student for ‘being correct’ or innately ‘clever’.
Concluding remarks
I’m not claiming here to offer anything radically new in terms of pedagogy. The examples of practice that I mentioned above seem to be the sort of thing that experienced teachers typically do to get students to see that they are capable of making progress, if only they’ll allow themselves – and the fact that they align well with the mindset theoretical framework just gives a pleasing coherence. The experience of students in the past, or in other schools currently, may have been different if teachers did, in fact, tell students that they were “no good” at this subject (or even worse “no good… just like your brother/sister/mother/father was no good at it”), or if the education system itself assumes that students have a fixed mindset and treats them accordingly by severely restricting their possibilities from very early on in their school careers.
I’m also wary of slipping into the mistake of telling children that they can “be anything they want to be, as long as they want it enough”, as that fails to address conditions adequately by absolutising responsibility. I’m told that a lot of children think that they are going to be ‘rich and famous’ because they really, really want to be rich and famous – it is easy to believe this when you see examples of celebrity culture. Maybe that attitude is not so common where I teach, but we can’t ignore the fact that some children will assume that they are ‘no good’ at certain subjects, or even the whole business of learning, because their parents before them were ‘no good’ – and it may be that there is a job waiting for them (in the family business, etc.) which doesn’t require them to have a school-level of understanding in physics! There are many other contributing factors other than the fact that a student ‘really wants’ to succeed, contrary to the popular perception, such as happening to be in the right place at the right time!
Provisionality markers are the words we use when communicating that signal we are being provisional rather than absolute. Using them well is a crucial part of the practice of provisionality. On the recent Objectivity Training course, I was planning to include some discussion of provisionality markers in one session, and then failed to do so in much detail because I ran out of time. One of the participants remarked that it would have been useful to give it higher priority, given the great practical importance of provisionality markers. Reflecting further, I agree, so I’ve decided to write a blog about it to help make up for my omission.
You will probably need to know a bit about provisionality, and how it differs from absolutisation, to follow this. If you haven’t come across the term before, I’d suggest watching this video.
Provisionality markers consist in words or phrases that try to directly communicate that a statement being made is provisional, usually by linking it to appearance rather than reality, opinion rather than claimed fact, or probability rather than certainty. Here are some examples:
Appearance rather than reality
It appears…
It seems…
Apparently
Evidently
Opinion rather than claimed fact
In my opinion…
I’d suggest…
On the whole I think…
In my view…
I think…
One might conclude that…
I believe…
Arguably…
Probability rather than certainty
…may…
…might…
Probably
It’s likely that…
The use of these terms is, of course, no guarantee that a person is being provisional. What make them provisional is their state of mind when they are making a judgement, and whether they are able to consider alternatives, not just whether they use these words. You’ll always need to judge provisionality from the context, rather than just from the use of these words, and they may be used formalistically, merely to try to avoid the possibility of offence, or because they are believed to be expected in the group. That judgement is obviously trickier on the internet, where the words are separated from information about tone and context.
In some cases the use of these terms may also indicate hesitancy or indecisiveness rather than provisionality. Indecisiveness should not be confused with provisionality, the difference being that provisionality involves taking as much into account as the conditions allow and then making a balanced judgement, whilst indecisiveness means failing to make a judgement when one is required. Indecisiveness may even often be accompanied by a negative absolute belief, such as that I can’t be justified in making a decision, or that decisions can’t ever be justified.
Nevertheless, I think the use of these terms (and others like them) can be very helpful. There are two aspects to the practice of using provisionality markers, obviously: using them ourselves and noting when others use them.
Using provisionality markers
Using them ourselves adds to the probability that others will recognise that we are trying to be provisional rather than absolute. That makes it more likely that a helpful discussion will ensue, because, if we disagree with each other, that makes it much more likely that we will consider and try to understand and assess each other’s positions rather than being defensive and ending up in conflict. Provisionality markers should set up whatever I am claiming for a discussion where we are both concerned with finding the most helpful outcome, rather than for an adversarial argument in which ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ is our main concern.
However, for provisionality markers to potentially have this effect, other people have to notice that we are using them. Thus it may help to give them extra emphasis in one way or another, particularly when communicating with someone whom you think might not notice or might not have noticed the markers. We can do this through tone of voice, or in text by using asterisks or other emphasising features.
Which markers we choose to use may also have an effect on whether they are noticed. Longer phrases like “One might conclude that…” may seem clumsy and over-formal, but have the advantage of going to great lengths to draw attention to provisionality. “I believe…”, on the other hand, may sometimes be intended as provisional, but (particularly in a religious context) is easily interpreted as dogmatic nevertheless.
The provisionality of the marker also needs to be consistent with the rest of what you are saying, and if the rest of your statement is absolute in form, no quantity of provisionality markers will rescue it. For example, it’s contradictory to say “It may be inevitable that you’ll find the right partner”: if it may be the case (rather than being a certainty), it can’t be inevitable. If you say “In my view conservatives are always greedy”, the over-certainty of your sweeping generalisation about conservatives is undermining the apparent provisionality of “in my view” to such an extent that your provisionality marker is likely to be deservedly ignored. It’s thus impossible to separate the use of provisionality markers from the wider issue of avoiding absolutes, which in turn requires some understanding of the wide variety of forms that absolutes can take so that you can avoid them.
Noting others’ use of provisionality markers
Just as important, however, as using provisionality markers oneself, is noticing when other people use them, and giving due weight to their intention to be provisional. This is related to the problem of people taking offence – something that they are responsible for as well as you. Even if you’re not inclined to enter into discussion of a claim that someone has made, if you recognise that they’re trying to do so provisionally, you can at least pass on without taking offence, recognising that a statement you disagreed with was probably part of someone else’s progression from a relatively ignorant position to a wiser one.
The crucial part of noting others’ provisionality markers is usually interpretation. Was the provisionality marker intended? Was the whole statement intended as provisional even despite the lack of provisionality markers? This is where I think the principle of charity is really helpful: this is the presumption, when in doubt, that a person had a more helpful rather than a less helpful intention. If you presume wrongly, after all, the outcome is much more likely to be helpful if you do so in a positive direction, and it’s likely to be become clearer in subsequent discussion whether or not the person was being genuinely provisional. The video below shows a variety of ambiguous situations where the principle of charity needs to be exercised!
One of my own bugbears online is having provisionality markers ignored, often by people who feel strongly about a particular view, and are eager to pigeonhole me either in the ‘for’ or ‘against’ camp in relation to that view, even when I want to suggest a third alternative. It’s easy to walk away from such heated debates (for example, about the EU in the current UK political climate) on the grounds that joining in may just lead to people taking offence and to unfruitful polarised discussion. At the same time, though, it is exactly such debates where provisionality and a critical perspective on over-simplifications are most needed. Making strong use of provisionality markers, recognising those of others, and also pointing them out robustly when others ignore them, may be important steps in making such discussions more productive.
Overall, then, the importance of provisionality markers, and of using them carefully, cannot be underestimated. In the end, however, their use cannot be separated from other Middle Way practices: provisionality, agnosticism, incrementality and integration.
Now available! The final volume in Robert’s ‘Middle Way Philosophy’ series, ‘The Integration of Belief’. This includes discussion of what belief is, how we can avoid delusions and how we can develop provisionality of belief. It draws on extensive evidence from psychology (cognitive bias theory) as well as philosophy, and includes quite a comprehensive survey of cognitive biases, fallacies and metaphysical beliefs that make us absolutise our beliefs and thus make errors. The front cover is reproduced right and the back cover below. Please go to this link if you’re interested in purchasing a copy.
