Who Am I? Transforming Our Understanding of Identity and Moral Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is the work of a master in the field.  Apart from some minor suggestions, below, it should be published as is. 

One of the highlights of the paper is, in an argument that I’ve never seen so clearly and well made before, the way the author takes the best of communitarian approaches to identity, meaning and morality (and to the Big Questions more generally) – approaches which turn to our relationships with others to answer these questions, and avoids the traps into which much communitarian thinking falls (ie, by seeking answers to these questions in one’s “moral horizons” [Taylor] that are so often determined by one’s tribe, ‘culture’, religion, etc) by turning to our relationships with each other as persons – nothing more, and nothing less – to begin the search for answers to these Big Questions.  In so doing, the author avoids the troubling aspects typical of so many communitarian approaches to identity, meaning and morality, while also avoiding the difficulties and solipsism associated with what is often cast as communitarianism’s opposite pole, the gloriously individualist liberal self.  In other words, what the author stresses is that we are one person among other persons, not one Catholic (Jew, black, woman) among other Catholics (Jews, blacks, women); and, equally, we are not one (individual) unto ourselves.  That said, there is still room in the author’s argument for me to be one black, Jewish, female person among other black, Jewish, female persons, if those are the inter-personal networks that are meaningful to me.  As the author concludes so majestically,

“we persons are – or should be – free to seek out those relationships with others – thereby expanding and enriching our inter-personal networks – which are particularly meaningful to us. For some, their nationality or religion might constitute such a network; for others, their friendship or family circle might do so. In any case, what matters here is that these networks are not reducible to specific qualities which bind us, in terms of identity and morality, to specific institutions. We enter into these relational networks as persons, even as these same relationships expand and deepen our sense of our own personhood. In this way, we can certainly see ourselves as connected to something “bigger than” ourselves, but not at the cost of “losing” ourselves in the process.”

Suggestions:

Page 6: Replace all “nation/s” in the following with “country/ies”.  This is important in terms of the argument being made here, and more generally.  ‘Nation’ is not the same as ‘country’.

In so far as

248 I value my identity as Australian (i.e. my identification with Australia and fellow Australians), the

249 basis of my strong feeling for, or commitment to, the nation is simply the contingent fact that I was

250 born in (or later accepted as a citizen of) a nation that was first settled many thousands of years ago

251 and, subsequently, by Europeans in 1788, and became an independent nation in 1901. Citizens of

252 other nations would, presumably, feel the same about their own countries. It is hard to see how such

253 a contingency can support any non-trivial sense of identity of identification.

And, if I have missed this distinction elsewhere, I’d recommend changing the terms accordingly.

Page 7: I think you mean “identity” rather than “identify” in the following:

275 extinction. The lack of precision in such cases confirms that there really are no clear identify conditions for cultures

Page 21: I think you mean “and (some) ancestors” in the following:

896 family members and (some ancestors)

Author Response

I have replaced "nation" with "country"; I also made the grammatical corrections indicated.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very good paper.  It is lucid, and its arguments are clearly presented and cogently argued. It is also timely, as it is challenging a dominant view perpetrated in the social sciences and popular opinion (including so-called identity politics) that personal identity, our sense of who we are, is necessarily constituted by the collectives and institutions with which we identify, be they national, political, religious, cultural, ethnic, social, gender or whatever. In opposition to this view, which reinforces narratives that binds us to tribalism, the reader is invited to consider an alternative view of identity in which each person sees her/himself as ‘one among others’ and all persons are endowed with what the author identifies as ‘the Principal of Personal Worth’.  This asserts that persons are ‘more important, valuable and worthy, morally speaking, than non persons’. A transformed understanding of identity not only invites the transformation of moral education in schools, it also challenges the moral relativism that pervades education.

Given the importance of the issues raised in this paper and the quality of the arguments presented, this paper should be accepted for publication as it is, without changes. In making this recommendation, there are considerations the author might bring to the paper, prior to publication, but it is my assessment that these should not stand in the way of publication, unless directed by the editors.  Also, there are aspects of the paper that I would wish to contest, but that is what a good paper always invites. What follows are three thoughts that the author might like to consider.

First, there seems to be an underlying assumption in the paper that most human beings, if not all are existentially concerned with understanding who they are. I’m not sure if this is correct and, if it is, whether it is not also a product of current trends in so-called social science and popular opinion, particularly in what is called the ‘west’.  While aware that this concern seems to be ubiquitous at this time and in the ‘western’ world I inhabit, for better and for worse, I am not sure it is universal. Personally, it’s not something I think about much, if at all. Perhaps because of a background in philosophy of science, I would be more likely to ask what am I? rather than who am I? The answer would then begin by identifying myself as a biological and neurobiological creature, a product of an evolutionary ancestry, sharing very many things in common with other creatures. And, if I take that route, I may yet finish up with the kind of relational notion of identity that the author advocates, though one in which I will accord moral worth to all creatures, not just ‘persons’ - if that is taken to be human persons.

Second, I would urge the author to be careful about using the term ‘moral education’. I sense from all the author says that he/she is talking about inducting children into an open and critical dialogue about moral values, how we should treat one another, what matters in our dealings with others and the world in which we find ourselves, and why. But overwhelmingly in China, moral education is not that at all; what children receive in what is called ‘moral education’ is an indoctrination into nationalism and blind patriotism. In that case, because this paper might be read in China and more especially by Chinese students studying overseas, I strongly suggest the use of the term moral education is problematised and, at the very least, the author clarifies as soon as the term is introduced what precisely he/she is referring to in using the term.

Third, the approach taken to the notion of identity is conceptual, drawing on Anglo-American analytic philosophy and mathematics. It may well be that those coming from that background will enjoy this approach.  Certainly, the distinction drawn between what the author refers to as strict numerical or quantitative identity and qualitative identity is core to the paper, as a whole.  It is nevertheless interesting that whereas more than half of the paper is concerned with labouring analytical distinctions, most do not feature in the Abstract, which is primarily focussed instead on moral education and identity and the strong alternative to qualitative notions of identity proposed by the author. In short, for this reader at least, the strengths of this paper are the issues that are highlighted in the Abstract, not the lengthy analytic discussion of identity that occupies much of the paper. That is personal preference, of course, but the point is that some readers might prefer not to engage with many of the analytical tangles but get straight to what is highlighted in the Abstract.  In that case, for example, such readers could be directed to read pages 1-3 and then skip to the second paragraph under the subheading Who, then am I? on page 13 – at least on a first reading of the paper. This paper has a lot to say of great importance to a broad spectrum of readers (particularly those in social science and post-modern relativists in education) which is not dependent on having to engage with Anglo-American analytic philosophy and mathematics.

Some thoughts to consider, but this is a very good paper.

Author Response

First comment concerning the question "Who am I?". See fn 16 (new) and fn 22 (new; this should now be fn 21);

Second comment concerning the term "moral education". See fn 2 (expanded), fn 20 (new; this should now be fn 19);

Third comment concerning the sections on logic and philosophy of language from analytic philosophy. I have chosen not to omit any of these for two main reasons: the arguments presented are crucial for my overall thesis, and I made every effort to minimise the use of technical language or to explain terms like "deixis" and "sortal", etc. I do not believe it is asking too much of readers to take the time to read through and ponder these sections.