ABSTRACT:
For Bateson, social change must be rooted in a profound epistemological shift, focusing mainly on education and communication (which includes his psychological theory). This paradigmatic revolution, based on the formal logic of Whitehead and Russell, avoids discourse that is said to be scientific but is devoid of rigor. In this article we hermeneutically analyze Bateson's thinking on these issues, stressing the limits that formal logic has in facing ethical, religious and aesthetic experiences. Without this revolution, we are condemned to intellectual stagnation, because we would be training citizens without the capacity of learning to learn. This capacity makes possible the ability to produce abduction, the logical inference required in the production of human reasoning. Its development would ensure the ability to think/construct the world in a complex fashion, connecting various areas of knowledge. Few are those who explain and argue for their beliefs, but this is the axiomatic basis for abductive capacity. Social organization (via the formal and non-formal educational system) depends on subjects who rarely possess well-structured minds that can pass from one level of learning to a higher one; and it actually stimulates the confusion of logical types, such as taking the whole for the part, for example. Bateson also criticizes the quantitative evaluation system, which diminishes the possibility for training in abstract and formal thought of the kind required by philosophy and mathematics.
KEYWORDS:
Bateson; epistemology; double bind; learning to learn; communication; learning levels