Karl and others are missing important distinctions. True enough, as 
Socrates long ago showed us, Wisdom cannot be taught. And I agree with 
Karl that the purpose of wisdom inquiry is to ‘teach students how to learn 
for themselves, how to challenge and criticise authority, how to 
participate in their own educational process, how to develop their 
characters, and how to discover for themselves what is of value for the 
enhancement of the quality and meaning of life.’ But I completely disagree 
with the notion that there should be no grades and that just going though 
the motions of attempting to defend a thesis is enough to get a PhD. I 
think such a proposal is as frightening as it is self-contradictory, which 
I will explain. Do we want surgeons who really understand how to perform 
surgery, pilots who really know how to fly planes, and so on? Surely we 
do. You do not want me to perform surgery on you or to fly your plane, 
because I am not trained in either profession. If I could just show up for 
a class whenever I wanted and not be graded or assessed and then still be 
able to be employed as a surgeon or pilot, clearly that could be 
disastrous. Thus, here is the first problem, which requires a proper 
distinction between wisdom and technical knowledge. Perhaps it is unwise 
to grade people according to their level of wisdom, but we must grade 
people according to their level of technical competence, whether in 
medicine, aeronautics, or logic etc. These distinctions between wisdom and 
technical knowledge require finer tuning, but the main point should be 
clear. Learning about oneself is one of the most important things we can 
do (wisdom based inquiry) but it is also important to learn technical arts 
(which require clear assessments). I have already mentioned to the list 
that the University of Philosophical Research has successfully integrated 
both approaches. If the FoW want to develop an educational institute, then 
we will have to focus on wisdom based inquiry or technical knowledge or 
integrate them both.
The second problem concerns self-contradiction. If Roger, for example, 
thinks that we should grade students and Karl thinks we should not, then 
Karl believes that his own ideas are better than Roger’s, which implies 
that Karl would necessarily judge himself to be wiser than Rogers, at 
least so far as future educational development is concerned. But, Karl has 
stated that no one can judge who is better or wiser etc, and so Karl 
cannot say that his ideas are better or wiser than Roger’s or anybody’s. 
Thus, Karl cannot attack the current educational system’s emphasis on high 
grades and careers etc because such an attack requires making a judgment, 
in effect a grading, and he places his own ideas above the conventional 
ones. But he cannot both say that we cannot make such judgments AND yet 
make such judgments. This is the problem with holding a relativist 
position. If relativism is true, then everything is just as true and just 
as false as anything else. But, relativism does not equal pluralism. 
Pluralism allows for many voices to be heard and to be given equal 
consideration, although we still must judge which ones are better. Karl 
sent an email about the horrific child abuse around the world, but a 
relativist cannot really condemn such horrors, only someone who really 
believes that it is REALLY wrong can consistently say that child abuse in 
all forms everywhere is wrong. But only a realist can say that, someone 
who is not afraid to make a judgment and provide reasoned arguments to 
defend it. There will always be a difficult dialectal tension between 
differing ideas and desires etc, but refusing to make distinctions and 
judgments is no way to deal with the inherent challenges. Worse still is 
pretending not to value distinctions yet making them yourself about 
others. A relativist who refuses to make distinctions cannot disagree with 
me, so, if you disagree with me, if you really think I am wrong about one 
or all my points (or correct), then you are being a realist. And it is 
only with someone who admits that there is truth outside of relativized 
context that you can have a good argument. If truth is nothing but context-
dependent convention, then there is no way to say that child abuse is 
really wrong if it is an accepted, prevalent practice in a particular 
society. Can we stop pretending that we do not need to make judgments 
about difficult issues, despite our fallibilities and the likelihood that 
many of our judgments may, after all, turn out to be wrong. 

John