## I. INTRODUCTION Education in the classroom is a simulation, which implies that classrooms are not real life. Yet our most general educational aim is to prepare learners for real life. Preparation for life requires an education in thinking on one's own—thinking for oneself—although thinking is personal and social—so that, ideally, students learn to think for themselves in the context of other people. In the best situations, we learn to think with others but retain an authentic sense of our beliefs, values, and principles. Since thinking is an attempt to make sense of ourselves and make sense to other people, the balance between personal and social influences may be difficult to manoeuvre, depending on someone's learning environment. Tensions between the personal and the social were pushed to extremes during the global pandemic that erupted in 2019. Issues surrounding thinking on one's own and thinking with others took on, sometimes, life and death dimensions. Do I wear a mask or not? Do I get the vaccine or not? What do I believe? If we consider the relationship between thinking and the reality we rely on as we think, the pandemic played into difficulties that were growing in North American learning environments and that were influenced by our global milieu. Confusion about what to believe did not start with the pandemic. Sigmund Freud (1963) used the word illusion to indicate large pictures we have about the world. He pointed out that all the sciences rely on illusion to some extent. The point is to discern between illusion and delusion by using the real world to provide evidence to support or counter what to believe. Yet, as Karl Popper noted, the hard sciences also move through paradigms that cannot be questioned until enough evidence is found to overturn their assumptions about the world (Popper, 2002). Relying on science during COVID became its own problem for many people. If reality is confusing, we accept illusions (delusions?) that offer themselves to us. If reality is not sound, if the social world is scary, it loses its veracity, and we may fail to accurately read the other people we need to help us think. It was fashionable in the last century to doubt the accessibility of what is real. Canadian author John Ralston Saul commented that there is an apparent inability to deal with reality that he believed constitutes a fear of reality so that we suffer from an addictive weakness for large illusions (Saul 1995). During the pandemic and the accompanying political dynamics, the idea of what is true caused many people to wonder what they could rely on to help them think for themselves. In general, how do we distinguish illusion from delusion if reality has no force to persuade? Can we protect ourselves from simulations that lie? How does thoughtfulness grow? To address these questions, I enquire into a relationship between reality and simulation and situate that inquiry in the context of educational practices that encourage people to think for themselves, together with other people. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how thinking works according to G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) and show what can go wrong if the reality we rely on is compromised by images we encounter in the global world of television—a position taken by Jean Baudrillard (1956-2007). While people may connect with images on their devices rather than on television, I assume that Baudrillard's analysis of images also applies to digital content. This article examines the human task of learning to think for oneself in the context of other people. Its central question focuses on the path thoughtfulness takes if thinking is authentically personal and socially sound. The article offers a model for thinking, abduction, that allows us to keep in touch with reality as we learn to think together. The article suggests a hopeful way forward for learning to think based on Immanuel Kant's (1704-1804) approach to the growth of intellect. ## II. BEGINNING TO LEARN Learning to think gains ground in a child's first lessons as they are surrounded by a crowd of people that guide them from the moment of birth. Suppose newborn Julie is lying in bed with her mother. Her father stands beside them. Whether extended family members and friends show up in person or not, Julie is surrounded by a community who teach her who her parents are, who she can count on when she asks questions about a world that existed before her birth, and about places she has never been but that none the less exist (Arendt 2018). During her initiation, Julie encounters a stock of knowledge that constitutes her life world. Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) observed that the stock of knowledge Julie acquires is experienced as a whole world. Wittgenstein probed the structure of thinking and observed that we all have a world-picture, an inherited background against which we distinguish what is true from what is false. His analogy for this background is a riverbed. He acknowledged that change is possible in the riverbed (some solid ideas may become fluid) but distinguished between water and riverbed in the following way: "the bank of the river consists partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away or deposited (Wittgenstein 1979: #97)." He noted that when we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition (belief), it is a whole system of propositions (beliefs). It forms a meaning system. As he put it, a child learns to believe a host of things [and] learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is...held fast by what lies around it (Wittgenstein 1979: #144). The whole world Julie acquires among her people is the measure she uses as she accumulates data about the world. Harvard professor Robert Kegan points out that every one of us grows up with what he calls an orthodox faith in our families of origin. Family religions are not synonymous with faith traditions. A family religion is one that operates powerfully and mysteriously in every family and is passed on to children because they live at home. It may carry areligion's name, but it is nourished by private family rituals and customs—a composite of deep, idiosyncratic beliefs and practices (Kegan 1994) that convey a particular whole world. To social theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), thinking is personal and social. It is a communal experience. Children grow intellectually as they think on their own and with others. Arendt notes that all one must do is listen to someone tell a story about what happened to them that morning, to observe evidence of thinking (Arendt 2018). Early learning environments convey "the common stock of human thought about anything and everything" (Adler 1997:xii), sometimes called common sense. A stock of knowledge is rich with notions formed by common experience during daily life, which we have without any effort of inquiry on our part because we are awake and conscious (Adler 1997:xii). American philosopher Mortimer Adler (1902-2001) said the purpose of philosophy is "to help us understand things we already know, [and] understand them better than we now know them" (Adler 1997: ix). Thinking for oneself with other people is a philosophical task. In his dialectics, Aristotle (2015) defined wise reasoning (elenchus) as the practice of reasoning from generally accepted opinions, i.e., this common stock of knowledge. His dialectics rests on the shared human need for other people who help us think. Yet something changed in the last century, according to Jean Baudrillard. Unlike Julie's initiation with her people, television and digital images are disembodied. How does dis-embediness shape a capacity for thinking? Early in his analysis of Internet experience, American philosopher Hubert Dreyfus raised questions about educations that relied entirely on computer mediated communication. He asked if learning to be masterful could be achieved via computer-mediated-communication and came to believe it could not. Learning complex social skills is achieved bodily, in face-to-face encounters. To him, omitting the body from a learning environment leads to a loss of the ability to recognize relevance, a loss of skill acquisition, a loss of a sense of the reality of people and things, and finally, the loss of meaning (Dreyfus 2008). The purpose of this article is to encourage educators to accomplish their learning aims by considering how they use simulation and understand how it works. Educators must ask themselves about the relationship between simulation and reality as they teach students to think for themselves in our complex personal, social, global environments. ## III. SIMULATION AND REALITY There are at least three possibilities for the relationship between simulation and reality. The first is that simulation is a false presentation of reality; it is a lie or delusion. Delusion does not provide for the most basic learning needs of students. This possibility for the relationship between simulation and reality is miseducative. The second possibility is that simulation is an approximation, it represents reality to some extent. Elements of real life are used and arranged so that learners acquire the ability to act responsibility and intelligently in class and effectively transfer learning to situations outside of it. This use of simulation is conducive to learning for life, but its success depends on bringing what is real into the classroom in a way students can grasp and use. Baudrillard presents a third possibility with simulation he describes in a disturbing way. He criticizes the simulation to reality relationship (re: media images) and in doing so provides a perspective on our social/global context. Baudrillard's description suggests that the second possibility for simulation applied in public classrooms is negatively affected by a proliferation of media images in the culture at-large. I explore media images as sites of mis-education in contrast to experiencing that educates, according to Hegel. If education is to help people hold a confident view of their ability to think for themselves in the context of other people, we must enliven the role reality plays in educational experience. We need an education that recovers the simulation to reality relation based on ancient Greek insights, i.e., the way simulation aimed at revealing patterns in human behaviour that told the truth, so viewers were more able to understand the human condition. ## IV. ANCIENT GREEK PERSPECTIVES ON REALITY AND SIMULATION Plato and Aristotle posed a reality to simulation relationship using the term *mimesis*, which is typically translated as simulation, representation, or imitation. In identifying the relation, they did not focus on the same aspects of reality. While Aristotle prized the role sense data play in the growth of the intellect, Plato focused on reality as an ideal, i.e., in the Forms. His conversation with an uneducated slave boy in the *Meno* dialogue (*Plato* 1981) demonstrates the boy's ability to think for himself as they engage in looking at a geometry puzzle together. Socrates relied on Greek myth to explain the boy's ability to 'recollect', i.e., think for himself. Learning to think for himself with Socrates followed this pattern: Socrates guides the boy with questions, until the boy moves from thinking he knows the answer, to realizing he does not know the answer, to being curious about the answer, to exploring with Socrates to find the answer. The boy remains curious. He continues to see and hear more of what is available to be seen and heard as he begins to think for himself with Socrates. He is stimulated by the real world in front of him and continues the inquiry. He remains curious. In the Greek world, simulation spoke of universals that convey what a particular kind of person is likely to do or say (Aristotle 1970). The aim of simulation (mimesis) was to present patterns to help people understand how human beings tend to behave. Simulation in its second sense helps reveal those patterns. This point matters in a discussion of the simulation to reality relation. If simulation tells the truth, its insights are invaluable as means for shaping an art of thinking. But if Baudrillard is correct, simulation in our current circumstances is incapable of operating in the way Socrates/Plato, Aristotle and Hegel proposed. I pick up Hegel's view later. Julie acquires a belief studded whole world. It holds inherited content and shapes her memory system. That is the only way children are initiated. Philosophical inquiry, the stubborn effort to get clear about something, concerns itself with thinking about her stock of knowledge. In the forward movement of her intellect, Julie must come to understand how media effects influence her opinions, knowledge, and beliefs, if she wants her worldview to be continually formed by truthful patterns about the human condition. ## V. MEDIA MIS-TAKES In assessing media culture, Baudrillard asserts that images, particularly television images, will not educate us. He says they are evil. Evil resides in the relationship images have with the reality we commonly assume stands behind them so that they challenge the second possibility for simulation (representation to some extent). To Baudrillard, the television image to reality relation is one of annihilation, not representation. If the image annihilates reality, TV images design environments that affect education adversely. Images at the end of the twentieth century trapped us in an unending repetition of their refusal to point to that which is real. While watching media images, we are frozen in pseudo-experience: we live in suspended animation with screens that dazzle us. To accomplish educational aims, we must thaw through educational experiences that transform rather than entertain. The anaesthetizing effect of the shape shifting of modern media images does not mirror the movement of conceptual shapes Hegel thought constituted educative experience. Hegel's educational perspective, conscientia (knowing with) grounds transformational learning. If Baudrillard's view is descriptive of the way they operate, media images prevent educational transformation and get in the way of learning to think with other real people. To explore the simulation/reality relation, I juxtapose Hegel's educational experience with Baudrillard's critique of media-image effects. The point of comparison is to reveal Hegel's model for experiencing as a process that encourages self-knowledge and transformation. Self-knowledge is not cognitive or psychological only; self-knowledge has emotional, cultural, gendered, economic, sexual, and racial dimensions. To know oneself includes coming to see the social categories that create perspective. In making a comparison between Baudrillard's critique of media effects and Hegel's educative experience, I consider Baudrillard's description of media images to be myth. French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1967) analyzed the symbolic function of myth and observed a modern separation of myth and history. He suggested that we are embarrassed by myth and as a result are tempted to give ourselves up to a radical demythization of all our thinking. This move keeps us from comprehending the relation between what he called fundamental reality and the actual modality of the human condition. To him, myth is autonomous and immediate. It means what it says. Although it is not reducible to analogy, its symbolism gives rise to thought. Baudrillard's myth of evil confers upon our experience an orientation, a character, a tension that informs us about reality, in the same way that our very best stories show us what people are really like. Baudrillard tells a story about TV images that is a useful heuristic tool. Comparing Hegel and Baudrillard permits us to see what might have happened at the end of the last century so we can respond thoughtfully, resourcefully, and hopefully to challenges technology poses to humanity in the twenty-first century. ## VI. HEGEL AND THE REAL CLASSROOM To explain Hegel's insight into intellectual growth, it is important to say how perceptual and conceptual learning work from the perspective of the human brain. Julie's worldview forms from infancy based on her perceptual and conceptual learning. As she experiences the world, a stream of sensations enters her infant brain and activates her nerve cells. As a result, her nerve cells (neurons) converse with one another. They send electrical impulses to one another until one nerve cell excites another. These messages continue to move from neuron to neuron among networks of nerve cells (Hebb 1980) to form a communication system within the human body. As sensations enter the brain, they excite a set of nerve cells linked to the external world through her organs (e.g., eyes, ears) and various parts of her body, e.g., when bones or muscles change position (Klein 1987). This process creates percepts that form the basis of her experience and establish memories that continually provide Julie with data (Hebb 1980) that accumulate as she learns about the world. A second set of nerve cells is linked to each other and not to the external world. The second set is responsible for conceptual learning (Bellous and Clark 2022). Perceptual learning creates percepts, conceptual learning forms concepts. Julie's concepts do not erase her percepts. She has ongoing access to both. While percepts are sense-based, concepts are not, in a strict sense. In this process, thinking is distinguished from sensing, but is related to it. Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb provided a framework for how the brain thinks. The typical human being has the complexity of about one billion cell assemblies. This complexity is what makes the normal development of intelligence and learning possible, including a capacity for abstraction and generalization (seeing patterns) that is fundamental to human thought (Hebb 1980). Perceptual and conceptual learning work together through their own internal communicative interaction (Hebb 1980). As far as thought is concerned, the development of new concepts is a process of modification in the ongoing development of old concepts (Hebb 1980). All learning depends on a relationship between percepts and concepts, which can be explored and augmented by encouraging learners to see and hear more (as two examples) of what is in a situation than previously acknowledged, as Socrates did with the slave boy. Due to connections between perceptual and conceptual learning, it is essential for learners to record, in some way, their initial and progressive understanding of situations, so their learning becomes clear to them. To understand Hegel's view (Hegel 1979; Heidegger 1968; Heidegger 1989), consider an analogy. Reflect for a moment on the difference between two types of conversation. In the first, we are speaking with someone who does not look at us, does not seem to hear anything we say, categorizes us in ways we find objectionable, and generally mis-interprets who we are, even though we are standing before them, trying to let them see us as we are. In this type of conversation, we are mis-recognized. The other neither sees us nor hears what we are saying. They do not seem to sense what we are in our uniqueness. In a second type of conversation, we are engrossed with someone who really looks at us, without making us feel the need to hide, who hears what we are saying and senses what we are doing even if we are not articulate about the complex feelings we have. As we converse, one or the other of us puts into words what we recognize as that which we really are. Through conversation we see ourselves in a new way. The other person is central to this recognition of self. The conversation is effective. We sense we are different from, but able to understand each other. Both participants change in talking together. The trajectory of change in thinking and feeling is drawn by the contribution each one makes. Neither voice is silenced. Neither voice is victorious. Hegel's philosophy of consciousness relies on perceptual and conceptual learning and is like the second conversation. Experiencing, or dialectical movement, is a dialogue that comes into being through the lively presence of people involved. It can also be an inner dialogue, a self-reflective exercise in which we are of 'two minds' about something. Education for the growth of consciousness allows us to reflect on our current meaning system. It is a process of paying attention to our own consciousness in the presence of others, whether the other is an object of our attention from the natural world (Umwelt), from the world of other people (Mitwelt), or from our personal world, (Eigenwelt), (May 1983), i.e., our own sensations, thoughts, opinions, interpretations, meaning. Reality (phenomena from natural, relational, or personal worlds) presents itself to consciousness. Dialogue takes place. We must add a fourth world to the three named above, the global ethos, or spirit of the times. This world impacts people as they think for themselves with others. Adding this world of data and experience rests on the twentieth/twenty-first century reality of living in a mass culture, a global context whose voice is as impactful as are the voices that are near to us. The dialogue within self-consciousness between perceptual learning and conceptual learning is a conversation between what Hegel calls natural knowledge and real knowledge. To him, natural knowledge (i.e., stock of common knowledge) provides us with thought that appears without any effort on our part. As soon as we sense the other, our knowledge of the other shows up as natural knowledge. Natural knowledge is our taken-for-granted idea of phenomena; looking at them is effortless. For Hegel, with natural knowledge, there is no work involved in our gaze because we assume we already know the object of our glance in advance of really looking. Real knowledge is the real being of phenomena that consciousness tries to explore. Real knowledge lives behind the back of its taken-for-grantedness, and refers to the way phenomena really are, as they exist apart from our incomplete or unfinished view of them. As an example, it is the difference between looking at the moon while lying on our backs on a summer evening and walking on its surface. It is the difference between the first conversation and the second one. During the dialogue between natural and real knowledge, natural knowledge shows up as incomplete or unfinished. This consequence for natural knowledge is made possible through skeptics, which is seeing, watching, scrutinizing to see what and how beings are as beings. There is a constant tension within consciousness between natural and real knowledge. This tension is natural knowledge's resistance to real knowledge and skeptics, although we must be clear that dialogue is not scepticism. Dialogue is not a method or approach that is recalcitrant in its resistance to the lively being of the other—its aim is simply to follow the movement of its object of study (Taylor 1979). But real knowledge may make natural knowledge uncomfortable. For growth to occur, Hegel thinks there is even a kind of violence between the two ways of viewing phenomena in which natural knowledge tries to refuse real knowledge. There is resistance to real knowledge due to the movement of conceptual shapes that typifies the growth of consciousness. Real and natural knowledge play an important, enduring role in dialogue. But natural knowledge lets go of its certainty when conceptual learning takes place. Hegel's concept of experience is grounded on conscientia, which "refers to the gathering into presence of the kind in which that is present which is represented (Heidegger 1989: 56), i.e., the phenomenon accurately presents/represents reality. Consciousness becomes intentionally conscious of what presents itself, that is, the phenomena (objects) we experience, i.e., the voice or presence of another person. To Hegel, experience has three senses: first, experience refers to receiving raw sensory material (sense data); second, it refers to receiving sensory material that undergoes some conceptual processing, i.e., experience that goes beyond mere sense perception and initiates conceptual learning; and third, experience refers to a process and a product in which attentiveness to phenomena results in a sublation of consciousness so that we move forward in our awareness of phenomena in a way that is closer to their actual being—i.e., the way they really are. Hegel says there are phases within conceptual learning and adds an emotional dimension of loss that accompanies the forward movement through these phases as we learn to think for ourselves in the presence of objects in the world. Hegel's third sense of experience, sublation, refers to tension in the dialogue between natural knowledge as it moves through skeptics to real knowledge. This movement of consciousness requires that some of what we understood about an object will shrivel and die. Some of what we understood takes a new shape, a process which constitutes the meaning of the term sublate. In the growth of consciousness, the new shape annihilates the old shape but the new bears a necessary relationship to the old; hence the old shape is part of the configuration of the new one (Inwood 1995). For Hegel and Baudrillard, something is annihilated in the process of thinking that each man describes; but what vanishes according to Baudrillard is different from what shifts its shape according to Hegel. To Hegel, the process of annihilation changes the shape of our idea of the object we observe. If we reflect on our current shape for an object, in its presence, we allow the other to be itself. What dies is our inadequate notion about something, our idea of trust, as an example, in the strong light of new observations. What draws a philosophy of consciousness forward is the relationship between our current concept for something in the face of its reality as we observe it. Hegel's idea of reality is central to the growth of the intellect. The engine that drives the movement of shapes is contradiction that lies at the heart of every concept as it encounters reality. I address contradiction later, but the growth of consciousness is always grounded on experience in Hegel's first sense, i.e., on sense data. In experiencing, we catch sight of something, a person, or a thing, e.g., the way someone's mouth is turned up at the corners. In observing that object, our sighting of it brings the phenomenon into view. In being conscious of, and fully attentive to the turning up of the corners of that person's mouth, we do not see the mouth only, we come to sense what the person really is, or we see more of what that person is. We perceive in a new way. As we gain understanding, we may realize the mouth's expression may be a sneer or a smile. If we want to know which it is, and what it means, the other person must direct our gaze, not our own thoughts or notions about the phenomenon. Our contribution is precisely to suspend our natural knowledge until we let the other person's mouth speak for itself. To Hegel, experiencing differs from doubting as understood by René Descartes (1596-1650). In Descartes' view of doubt, we begin with thought X (my friend is worthy of my trust). In an activity of doubting we fully consider not X (my friend is not worthy of my trust) to be the case. After we reflect on not X, we doubt our doubt (we mistrust our mistrust of our friend) and return to X (my friend is worthy of my trust). When doubting ends, things are much the same as they were at the beginning (Descartes 1962). In experiencing, as conceived by Hegel, as we are engrossed with X, we become attentive to X in such a way that our consciousness of X shifts and changes shape. The direction of the change arises from the nature of the object, as it really is, rather than from our need to return to our familiar concept of it. The new shape for X annihilates the old shape of X so that the old X dies; a new shape takes its place. We now have a new shape for consciousness to consider. It may be that a first awareness of the movement of shapes in consciousness is the recognition that an old shape for a concept has died. This realization can cause pain. I may think my friend is trustworthy because she always meets me at the precise time we agree on. I trust her because she never fails to show up. The shape of my concept for trust rests on never having been let down. If she does not come one day, I become attentive to her not coming and to the relationship between the conceptual shape I have for trust and her being. In dialogue I may come to see that she has a complex life. So do I. Trusting her does not mean never being let down. Trust means something more. It signifies confidence that has more hope than certainty in it. But I risk pain and loss in the process. I cannot look forward to a comfortable place to which I may return. I cannot go home to my old concept of trust; but neither is the new one entirely strange and without any trace of the old one. As mentioned earlier, the engine that drives the movement of shapes for our idea of something is contradiction that, to Hegel, lies at the heart of our experience with phenomena, and indeed, lies within ourselves. It is contradiction that makes concepts shift and change. This is why educative events always disturb us. To continue with our example, what is it about trust that requires that we sometimes must be let down to understand how trust operates? It is precisely that disappointment makes trust wise. In facing contradiction, Hegel identifies that it is clear conceptual work (reason) that moves us forward in dialectical inquiry: reason begins to reconcile the contradiction within each concept, within each person. Becoming conscious of our concept for trust is a positive response to the vulnerability and interdependence of embodied human beings. We learn to feel trustful or mistrustful from birth. Trust is re-conceived throughout life. As reason operates in dialectical movement (experiencing), opposites are reconciled, yet the identity of each part of the duality is preserved in some way in the shape of the new concept. The old shape directs the trajectory of the unfolding concept. ## VII. RECONCEIVING OLD CONCEPTS Let's look at an example of conceptual learning (Bellous and Clark 2022). Suppose Nancy grew up with an absentee father. She learned from experience (e.g., her mother's behavior, her own disappointment) that he was away because he found other tasks, other people, other places more interesting than spending time with family. Of course, everyone in her family may have misunderstood his motivation for being gone and been unaware of the role played by his lack of the social and emotional skills needed to communicate his love convincingly. But based on experience, Nancy built her concepts for man, husband, father because she believed her dad did not want to spend time with family. Then Nancy married Jim who, in his mid-thirties was required by his workplace to be away from home a lot of the time. As she pays attention to her emotions and thoughts, Nancy comes to see that Jim is not her father. She perceives his love for her and their children. By remaining open to what is going on, she revises her concepts for husband, father, man, so that absence does not equal indifference. Jim is committed to family, prefers to be at home and is fully present when he is there. The shift involved in Nancy's conceptual learning is enormous. Initially, a contradiction between her father-based husband concept (past) and her new understanding of Jim moves her thinking forward as she tries to understand herself. She pays attention to what is going on and uses new percepts to re-think old concepts. She questions her beliefs. She gets distance from old concepts, and observes them change, based on new experience. Most importantly, she trusts Jim enough to hear his reasons for why he is doing what he is doing. She releases her grip on old concepts and lets them be informed by her new reality. By doing this work, Nancy perceives Jim's humanity in a way she could not see before. She does not pretend she never had negative concepts. She does not forget she had an absentee father. The old is part of the configuration of the new. Someone who grew up with an attentive father has different work to do. Nor does Nancy believe she can just walk away from her past. As she releases her grip on them, she no longer uses old concepts as weapons. She is more able to focus on her values. What she learns in relationship with Jim is new and challenges what she previously thought about all men, particularly because she grew up in the mass culture of mid-twentieth century feminism, which she now reflects on without throwing away its truthfulness. Up to now old concepts controlled her assumptions. When she experiences a conceptual shift, she intentionally weighs and reflects on concepts for man, father, husband, rather than being controlled by old ones. By carefully thinking about her thinking, she considers past and present at the same time (Penfield 1975). She practices trusting Jim. Trust is a choice, sometimes a difficult one. Nancy engages in the struggle by embracing her past. Jim participates, but the conceptual learning is essentially hers. Jim has his own learning to do. Everyone does. Conceptual movement is seldom sudden and requires awareness of what is going on between past and present. Old concepts still pop up, but less so as trust builds. When Nancy reflects on what she is thinking, her idea of Jim moves closer to his actual being. The outcome of rethinking her concepts is that Jim shows up as the person he is. Up to now, he was hidden from view, covered up by her patchwork cloak of old concepts. Rethinking has other benefits. As her father ages, Nancy loves being in his presence and releases him from her youthful anger. Her thinking is more her own than it was before and has the quality of the personal and the social. Nancy's learning is an example of Hegel's experiencing, i.e., of being with one's own thinking To Hegel, Nancy's consciousness of her own thinking has three notable features: it moves through increasingly adequate stages and is dependent on the social world to mature its potential; it is essentially interpersonal and requires reciprocal recognition with other self-conscious beings (an I that is a we; awe that is an I). It is practical and cognitive because self-consciousness exists in a world of other people and finds itself in those others. The other is essential to the awareness that develops through self-consciousness experiencing (Inwood1995). That is, Jim must begin to say (kindly, compassionately) that he feels misinterpreted by Nancy's concepts for man, husband, father. In summary, Hegel describes educative experience as a process of reaching forward and arriving somewhere new. Experiencing is a mode of being present. In experiencing, we allow the lively presence of the object of our gaze to help shape the concept we have of it. The movement of shapes in consciousness is an ongoing process and a product: the product is a new shape for consciousness to consider. Hegel proposes that consciousness moves forward in a necessary way which the real nature of what is present makes possible. On his view, being reasonable implies a developing willingness and ability for the social and personal growth of the intellect in contrast to dogmatic attachments we refuse to philosophize about. This is not to say maturity means walking away from childhood meaning, which usually implies walking away from our people. Thinking for oneself is authentic and socially astute. Personal freedom is never so complete that we can forget we share humanity with all others. Mature thinking is constrained by humility—the truthfulness that every generation only sees part of what the real world has to offer. ## VIII. THE EVIL IMAGE AND THE DEATH OF THE OTHER To Hegel, reality cannot be withdrawn from the growth of intellect. Yet Baudrillard asserts that the end of the twentieth century was characterized by just such a loss. If modern reformers de-sacralized the world to fully articulate their conception of human freedom, Baudrillard is a secular theorist who re-sacrilizes the image. He analyzes images in a secular world that is caught up in modern forgetfulness of its traditional sacred objects, practices, and relationships. What must be kept in mind is that Hegel counted on the lively presence of the other as a dialogical partner in the growth of consciousness, while Baudrillard discounts the liveliness of the other because he believes TV images annihilate the reality that stands behind what they pretend to represent. TV images are an example of simulation in the third sense presented earlier, which is to say that they do more than merely lie. To Baudrillard, modernity was a project that promised liberation but failed. All we can do now is simulate liberation (Baudrillard 1993). The image's role in simulation is evil. Baudrillard uses religious and moral language to explain his perspective, despite insisting his views are beyond good and evil and beyond morality. In his use of religious terms, we must keep in mind a distinction he made. In referring to Nietzsche, he says that the utterance "God is dead" is not a denial of God's existence, but a challenge to its liveliness, to the being of God. He posits that the disappearance of something, God or meaning, always involves a challenge, a questioning, an act of seduction (Bellous 1996). Rather than positing the death of the Other, we might sense Hegel's dialectics at work—the end of one shape for a concept for God and the emergence of something new. What does it mean to make images sacred? Baudrillard gives the image the power of humanity and deity. He attributes agency to images from the object world (Umwelt): images can do things and can do them in spiritual (magical) ways. What is his point about the agency of an evil image? First, Baudrillard, following Nietzsche, writes in the extreme. In referring to a particular soccer match at Heysel Stadium in which violence broke out, he says: "[o] currences of this kind represent a sudden crystallization of latent violence;" in incidents of this kind, evil is terrorism: a violent form of abreaction in the social realm. Evil is an implosion, characterized by extenuation and extermination. To him, the real and only problem is: "where did Evil go?" He answers, "everywhere—because...modern forms of Evil know no bounds....Where it is no longer possible to speak of Evil, Evil has metamorphosed into all the viral and terrorist forms that obsess us (Baudrillard 1993:81). While we no longer talk about it, evil has spilled out into the world, leaking into every crack and crevice, vaporizing into the very air we breathe. If educative experience is drawn forward by the lively presence of the other, to Baudrillard, the liveliness of the other is annihilated. Due to media-image effects, the reality of the other is annihilated—not the inadequate shape for my concept of the other, as it was for Hegel. In stating his position on the annihilation of the other, and just as Nietzsche announced the death of God, Baudrillard announces the death of the social relation (Baudrillard 1983). His analysis of the fate of the social relation depicts how evil operates as it leaks out into the world. Evil's annihilation of the social relation expresses itself through simulation, expansion and hyperreality, terms explained later. He grounds his proposal for the death of the social relation on the view that representing reality is no longer possible. The implications of Baudrillard's critique of media images are echoed by theologian Michael Welker (1997). Welker posits that, at the end of the twentieth century, we could no longer not be religious. It is, however, more accurate to say that in the twenty-first century we cannot not be spiritual. See, for example, a Pew Research Center Report (Dec. 7/23).It summarizes their research to say that 7 in 10 U.S. adults describe themselves as spiritual in some way, including $22\%$ who are spiritual but not religious, which is a tendency that also describes people in the U.K. and western Europe (Bellous 2021). Welker believes the claim that we cannot help but be religious misleads us until we realize that much of our current religious (spiritual) experience amounts to what he calls an emphatic act of self-referencing that he considers to be an impoverished form of faith, one that is arbitrary and confused. In making his point, Welker notes the role media images play in constituting the inwardness and isolation that misdirects authentic faith. Like Baudrillard, he is aware that practices of relativism dilute social categories until they lose their identity and therefore their meaning. To make this point, in discussing the effects of artist Andy Warhol on our idea of art, Baudrillard says that: When Warhol says: all works are beautiful—I don't have to choose between them because all contemporary works are equivalent; when he says: art is everywhere, therefore it no longer exists, everyone is a genius, the world as it is, in its very banality, is inhabited by genius—nobody is ready to believe him. Yet his is in fact an accurate description of the shape of the modern aesthetic, an aesthetic of radical agnosticism (Baudrillard 1993). One example of the loss of meaning is the relativizing proliferation of self-referencing religion. In personally constructing inner certainties based on private positions on faith, people lose the liveliness of God's Self-Revealing presence, a presence that traditionally set boundaries around what it meant historically to be Christian. In criticizing self-referencing religion, I do not wish to promote a world in which there is one right way to be Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim. I certainly do not long for a world in which there is one right way to be religious. Diversity supports personal freedom. But if there is insufficient territory on which to stake a coherent identify, if faith perspectives drift into one another, they lose their characteristic shape (Gilson 2009). A necessary tension in inter-religious dialogue fosters understanding and co-operation on one hand, and lively, credible, coherent, self-defining dialogue within faith traditions, on the other hand. If religion is a self-referencing meaning system in which the lively presence of diversity disappears, what does it mean to transmit tradition in such a way that faith is grounded on critical reflection, authenticity, dialogue, in community, even with those who believe there is no God. Self-referencing thought forecloses on dialogue and seeks company with those who agree to only agree. The point of thinking for oneself in the presence of others is that we allow thought to be social and personal. How is thinking to become humble and confident in its own way of being? How do people keep from believing that it does not matter what they believe, or from believing that what they hold as belief equals the truth, the whole truth? When societies privilege relativizing strategies (every view is of equal value) effort to maintain a coherent identity is disdained. Identity is relativized and constructed in isolation. Media play a pivotal role. In the construction of a personal worldview, media images (as outpourings of visual fragments to viewers who configure them to create plausible meanings) compose themselves within viewers as a personal, individuated message. Welker intimates that religion is currently constructed in this way. Bits and pieces of religious sentiment are configured into personal, internal systems that are quietly maintained. Does it matter that people build inner shrines from these bits and pieces? I think it does, but not because of contradictions people let in as their view is under construction. I say this for two reasons: contradiction aids the process of experiencing in a healthy learning environment, and no era can avoid contradiction. Life is never that tidy. The problem is not the fragments used as building material. It is the fortress-like, inaccessible, personal certitude gluing the bits together that creates isolated believers, whether beliefs are about God or the COVID vaccine. Fortress walls prevent different views from entering a personally sacred space. Confidence outside class, mentioned at the outset as a desirable educational outcome, is not a defensive warfare carried out from the towers of impregnable certitude. Baudrillard and Welker are correct. An inner sanctum of certainty barricades itself from the external liveliness of others—God, sense data, traditions, other people. Yet, most often, if these walls of certitude are successfully breached the whole structure collapses. ## IX. MEDIA POWER GAMES The tension between certitude and lassitude is not the only challenge intellectual growth must face. Recall Wittgenstein's point about the whole world conveyed to Julie. In the early years, her worldview is primarily inherited content. How do media fragments meet with someone's whole world? How does Julie take in new data? If she comes to see the world due to the lively presence of her people, how does she learn to think for herself in a media imaged world that annihilates the liveliness of others and if it does not tell the truth about humanity? What media power games must Julie learn to navigate and learn to see coming? Baudrillard's narrative of the relation between the image and reality is not reducible to simple terms, but the myth's meaning may be captured in connections between words he uses to describe the image. He said that images shift from simulacra to simulations. A simulacrum resembles reality; it is its form or likeness. Simulation falsifies reality. A related term, simulacre, is an image to which honor or worship is rendered. The third term entices the idea of the religious into the relation between image and reality. The disappearance of meaning and representation in a simulation is a paradox he described as the equal impossibility of the appearance of the real or the imaginary in the images that confront us now (Baudrillard 1988). When Baudrillard sacralizes the image, he attributes to it a capacity for playing power games. He describes three evil power plays called simulation (third sense), expansion, and hyper reality. Interpretations of power situate his talk of evil. Theological discourse on power prepares us for some of Baudrillard's critique. American theologian Walter Wink (1984) explained how he thinks power operates. In making his case, he confronts enlightenment beliefs that humanity can create its own gods, and these gods can disappear and die. Like so many who wrestle with evil, he examined power because of relentless horrors from first-hand encounters with social and political evil during a four-month leave spent mostly in Chile and other South American countries. While there, he met with nationals swept up in a torrent of state oppression. In presenting power, or the powers, I neither challenge his view nor expect readers to accept it fully. That is not my aim. Wink's view is set beside Baudrillard's idea of evil so that each may illuminate the other. These views are myth. They are not reducible analytical dissection: my aim is to see from myth to myth. Seeing from myth to myth is what Julie must do as she learns to think for herself in the company of people who did not grow up with the whole world she inherited. In terms of the image's power games, ideas about power cluster and swarm around a reality Wink organizes into a discernible pattern in which the world is material and spiritual. To him, the spiritual refers to an inner dimension of the material, "the within of things," the subjectivity of objective entities in the world; the material and spiritual are indivisible, and the powers are heavenly and earthly, divine and human, good and evil (Wink 1984), a view congruent with ancient Greek mythology. The spirituality of a person, team, institution, or state exists as one of its real aspects, even if it is not perceived as such, e.g., mob behaviour at a soccer match. On Wink's view, each material entity, person, or event has a characteristic spirit that endures. The spirit of a nation is perpetuated through its history and policies. To Wink, a mob spirit does not hover in the sky waiting to leap down on unruly crowds at soccer matches. It is the actual spirit within the crowd as it reaches a certain critical flashpoint of excitement or frustration. It comes into existence in that moment, causes people to act in ways they never would have dreamed themselves capable, and ceases to exist the moment a crowd disperses (Wink, 1984). To Wink, the spiritual does not exist apart from embodiment in cellulose, political regimes, corporations, or megalomaniacs. He rejects dualism, matter separate from spirit, and regards matter and spirit as united in an indivisible reality, distinguishable in discrete but interrelated manifestations. The ambiguity of power is intrinsic to a degree in every manifestation of power, a view not unlike French philosopher Michel Foucault's (1926-1984) analysis of power as energy (Foucault 1979). This means that an ideology does not just float in the air. It is always the nexus of legitimations and rationales for actual entities, whether union or management, a social change group or the structures it hopes to reform. As the inner aspect of material reality, the spiritual powers are everywhere around us. Their presence is real and inescapable. The issue for Wink is not whether we believe in them, but whether we discern what is going on. As one example, we may be sitting at a meeting and begin to feel unreasonably angry. If we look around and hear unreasonable anger expressed generally by otherwise reasonable people, we sense the spirit of the group is anger. Anger needs to be identified and faced. Ancient minds moved from material to spiritual easily; we do not. Wink's interpretation of spirituality does not preclude human agency. The deaths of Socrates and Jesus are important examples. Both went against the spirituality of the current regime. Each was accused of crimes but in neither case did the accusations provide sufficient cause for their execution. As Wink notes, political prisoners who obey the rules and behave respectfully are felt to stand against the spirit of the prison, as Nelson Mandela learned on Robben Island. The system rejects and punishes such people vehemently. Many women find they cannot or do not wish to support the dominating male spirit of an institution. Their resistance is felt and countered in subtle and not so subtle ways. Fear of defying the spirituality of an organization effectively maintains it. Wink makes it clear that unless evil in spirit and structure are converted and changed, no lasting reform is possible. Without spiritual renewal, new structures take up with former ones. The new order becomes capable of all the evil of the previous system. An analogy may help. Suppose a farmer finds dead fish floating on the surface of his fishpond. He removes the dead fish and buys new healthy fish and puts them in his pond. The next week, these fish too are floating. If he does not realize the pond is toxic, he will never have a viable source of healthy fish. Like Baudrillard, Wink sees evil as a spirit of death and destruction. He believes that the spirit of life or death in a society is not a function of good or bad will in individuals only; it is the consequence of a determinate, institutionalized spirituality in the material organization of relations between people (Wink 1984). The possibility of well-being in any social sphere is constrained by the material and spiritual reality in its way of being, as is the case with systemic racism. To misinterpret the presence of the spiritual as help or hindrance to social relations is to fail to take full account of human reality. The liveliness of the other must be understood as spiritual liveliness. The intellect must be discerning with respect to evil. Ultimately, the only effective response to evil is to live a life of love. More than reason moves a life of love. Love prizes and shows interest in the lively presence of the other. Wink's view of the evil highlights the fourth world, i.e., global mass culture. In addition to the natural, human, and personal worlds, the global spirit of the times impacts how we think, due to the power that mass culture brings relentlessly to bear on how we perceive reality. ## X. THE POWER GAMES OF EVIL Hegel's concern with reality is that its lively presence should direct the flow of self-knowledge and transformation, which are the products of experiencing. It is not that the other's presence determines the outcome. A relationship between consciousness and the other's lively presence is dialogical. But without a lively other, consciousness stalls. To use Baudrillard's metaphors, it collapses in on itself. It is frozen in power games of evil, Baudrillard asserts that there are three possible hypotheses about the illusion we persist in making use of, i.e., the social or the social relation. The first proposes that the social is a simulation; the second, that the social alone exists. The third is that the social no longer exists. While he distinguishes three power plays, they work together in one evil game. Taken separately, each power play couches death. The first does so because, if the social relation is a simulation, it is also a lie. Simulation falsifies reality. Baudrillard is not only saying simulations lie. The overall effect of the power game is to annihilate reality. Recall the first two possibilities for simulation: simulations lie; simulations represent. According to Baudrillard, simulations (third sense) accomplish their evil games by lying in a way that makes it impossible for images to represent reality. If an image accurately represents an object, it stands in the place of the reality behind it and points to that reality. This is an idea on which Hegel depends. In Western philosophical tradition, concepts are paired together and placed on a continuum that allows us to note their similarities and differences, for example, the terms social and political. A continuum is drawn between social at one end and political at the other. Differences and similarities are positioned between the end points. Differences lie close to the end of the line; a mid-point focuses on their similarities. This analysis does not imply the concepts ever overlap or are the same. Using insights from Canadian philosopher Marshal McLuhan (1967), Baudrillard affirms that the notion of rational representation works in the way noted above. In simulation (third sense), he asserts that there is no continuum line. The social cannot be represented rationally, because there is no longer a distinguishing term (political) to support its meaning. There is only the social. Its meaning collapses or moves outside rational representation in a way he demonstrates in Transparency of Evil (1993). In speaking of the death of the social, Baudrillard is not saying the social does not exist, but that the concept can no longer be represented rationally. Due to the absence of an opposite pole. With nothing to support it, the social falls in on itself through an implosion, i.e., a simulation. Its collapse is the result of his second hypothesis about the social relation. In the second hypothesis, that the social alone is real, the concept falls in on itself through what he calls an excessive expansion. The social spreads itself everywhere and leaks into everything. The collapse of the social is a consequence of relativizing strategies, e.g., if everything is social, then nothing is social. In the third hypothesis, hyper-reality, (in which it no longer exists), the social confuses the real with the image of itself and eradicates the speculative distance between the real and the rational (Baudrillard 1983). In hyper-reality, the idea of the social annihilates what is real. As an example, consider the hyper-tasteful snacks that are so plentiful. Producers would like nothing better than to provide snacks that are so flavourful we cannot stop consuming them, but whose undesirable calories and fat flush right through our bodies as though they were never there. These snacks are not food. If we consume them, we are not eating. We are doing something else. Something new. One can imagine hyper-tasteful snacks getting in the way of eating: of eating food becoming unattractive. Hence, the death of food. Medical doctor, scientist, and journalistChris van Tulleken develops this point in his book Ultra-Processed People: The science of food that isn't food (2023). Taken together, strategies of simulation, expansion, and hyper-reality comprise the image's evil power game. As with the social relation, when Baudrillard sacralizes the image, it becomes an evil agent. He does not permit us to assign goodness or pedagogic usefulness to the image. In describing the social relation and discussing media images, Baudrillard (1988, 1993) challenges the fundamental relation between sign and referent by declaring that 'standing for' constitutes neither a representation, nor even a lie, butan annihilation of reality through evil's power games. He posits the occurrence of an implosion in the triadic system between sign, object referred to, and the meaning that results, and heralds the end of meaning. To explore his point, we can say that ordinarily, people expect the reference principle of an image to represent a reality that is logically and chronologically anterior to it. Baudrillard questions this ordering and chronology. He challenges images in terms of their value as representations, as media of presence and meaning. He thinks we are wrong to have confidence in the realism of TV images because meaning has disappeared. He describes its disappearance in two ways, first in terms of what he calls the fate of value, and second, in terms of his description of the relation between the image and reality. The fate of value is picked out in distinctions Baudrillard makes among four stages in the assignment of value to the objects we use or produce. The natural stage (use-value) has a clear referent. I eat an apple. The apple satisfies my hunger. Its value is tied to its use. The commodity stage (exchange-value) relies on what he calls general equivalence: value develops along the logic of a commodity. Items produced have the value people will spend on them. He posits a third structural-stage in which (sign-value) is governed by a code. Value develops on models designed by those who determine the code. People who establish and maintain the code set the value of products. The fourth stage, which he thinks we experienced at the end of the twentieth century, he calls the fructal stage. In this stage there is no reference point at all; value radiates in all directions, occupying all fissures, without reference to anything whatsoever, by virtue of pure contiguity; the ground rules for reality are lost; value burns out, so that each value or fragment of value shines for a moment in the heavens of simulation(Baudrillard 1993). The fourth stage relates most directly to what he says about the evil image. Ground rules for reality go missing. Images acquire a specific value in television land that is established within the interplay of images on the screen, acted out by people who are paid to do so. The interplay is disconnected from real people. Human relationships are constructed on a model that works for TV but not in real life. In addition to the loss of meaning, the loss of the real is understood through relationship images have with reality identified in four moves: the image complies with, reflects, absorbs, and annihilates reality. While there are four moves, again, there is only one game. All four are equally always present in the extenuation and extermination of meaning, just as simulation, expansion, and hyper-reality cohere in the death of the social. In the first move, complying, the image expresses a diabolical conformity to reality that is distinguished from a dialectical pattern. In dialectical relations we assume meaning can be read from the image to reality and vice versa, in a rational manner. In transformational learning, we anticipate making reality more understandable and accessible. As a chameleon the image feigns its resemblance to reality. This is the source of its perversion because, in feigning its resemblance to reality, it contaminates reality rather than transforming it into a clearer image of itself. The image at the end of the twentieth century refused clarity. To Baudrillard, images took over, imposing their own immanent, ephemeral logic, without depth, beyond good and evil, beyond truth and falsity. In the second move, reflecting, the image works only to distort reality. As the image reflects reality it "becomes scrambled" so that it is impossible to tell which is the effect of the other. In an ordinary relation of reflecting reality, the viewer assumes reality comes before the image in time and stands as its model. In contaminating reality, the image precedes reality in a simulation that Baudrillard describes as a chain reaction, like a nuclear chain reaction, with the terrible outcome of leaving us indifferent and undifferentiated, changing our expectations about the real world. This chain reaction produces an implosion that cools and neutralizes the meaning and energy of events. When events are cooled and neutralized, we are no longer horrified by harm. The movement from cool to cold is best understood in McLuhan's (1964, 1967) terms, hot and cool media. A cool medium implies commitment and involvement from the viewers' mental faculties. The cool TV viewer becomes the screen. TV requires our participation in reconfiguring its images. If images turn cold, viewers are frozen in involvement. They cannot escape or stop playing the game. They are kept alive, fascinated, but barely breathing. Under this condition, they act like Luddites or leave themselves out in the cold. In either case, thinking for oneself in the company of the image loosens it hold on reality. In the third move, consumes, the image absorbs reality and extenuates itself endlessly. Distinctions are lost. We are confused. Categories of experience are generalized to the greatest possible extent. Losing specificity, they are reabsorbed by other categories. We are undifferentiated. When everything is political, nothing is political anymore, the word itself is meaningless (Baudrillard 1993). What is constant in these conditions is immense uncertainty. Baudrillard announced that the "revolution of [his] time is the uncertainty revolution" (Baudrillard 1993:43). Uncertainty is ungrounded by the real world, by real people. Perhaps it is in reaction to relentless uncertainty that viewers build personal internal fortresses of opinion and belief and confuse opinion and belief with knowledge. Hegel expects uncertainty to be part of experiencing, but uncertainty loosens its grip on natural knowledge in the face of the lively presence of the other. Uncertainty is informed by the reality of the other. In dialogue, we are drawn forward toward that which is real about the other, as Nancy was with Jim. Meaning is made through releasing current concepts during authentic dialogue. But meaning is possible only if the other is allowed to speak for himself. Baudrillard's fourth move, annihilation, signals the end of meaning. In the relation between images and reality, he asserts that no resolution, no finality occurs to relieve us, excite us, or move us forward in either hope or defeat. We are caught in a chain reaction that is never satisfied through finality. Instead we experience an implosion: a secret continuous implosion resulting from the pressure of the absence of finality and resolve. Nothing happens. Nothing is ever over. Everything is frightening. Nothing is final. We hold our breath. Because there is no explosion, no relief, we are kept alive by "homeopathic doses of the cold energy of the [image]" (Baudrillard 1988:29). We are kept alive but have no meaning. In watching media images, we are held in suspended animation. We watch and wait for catastrophes that are coming, but never arrive. If they seem to arrive, viewers are soon caught on the cusp of another threat that re-absorbs their attention. In removing the eventuality of disaster from view, our interpretation of it shifts. This shift has nothing to do with its reality. It is a media event. The clear conceptual reasoning Hegel positions at the centerpiece of the growth of consciousness evades us because reality is muted. We find it hard to make judgments or decide what to think. Images compound confusion. What do we make of Baudrillard's analysis of the end of the social relation? If you go online and search para social relationship, it may become obvious the term holds sway with many people. What does it mean? According to Wikipedia, para social relationship refers to a psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with mass media performers on television and online platforms. The term para social relationship was first used by Horton and Wohl in 1956 to describe the profound impact the mass media has on viewers. Their research pointed to one striking characteristic of the mass media (radio, television, movies), which was the illusion of face-to-face relationship with a performer(Helpful Professor.com, October 13/23). Current internet commentary on para social relationship warns that relationships with celebrities are usually entirely one-sided. Each person is unaware of the other. No lively presence exists. A benefit that seems to accrue for viewers is that, in para social relationship, the possibility of criticism or rejection does not exist. In conversation with one young person who uses her device to connect digitally with performers, she noted that, in her view, people she knows are beginning to question the para social relationship. What does it look like, in a para social world, to think for oneself in the presence of other people? Conceptual learning creates understanding by observing what is real. It judges and chooses, accepts and rejects, divides and distinguishes—it takes in context—such as the global spirit of the times. It thinks intentionally about its impacts on humanity and tells the truth about the human condition. Conceptual learning moves through loss to recovery, confusion to understanding. As viewers not participants, we cannot grow towards being reasonable through observing things as they are because we do not see them as they are; we see them as they are imaged. We do not see reality. What we see is designed. To recap fundamental features of learning to think together, authentic personal involvement engages with others in a way that allows both parties to speak for themselves, a practice essential for maturing thought. The connection between the personal and social is made strong by effort spent on the willingness and ability to identify patterns that typify human interaction truthfully. If Baudrillard was correct, for viewers, experiencing does not occur. They are directed away from reality. Baudrillard's perspective on the social relation may intensify anxiety and mistrust. Yet I think there is a way out. McLuhan foresaw problems Baudrillard described. In response to the possibility that reality is distorted technologically, McLuhan said that there is absolutely no inevitability if there is the willingness to contemplate what is happening (McLuhan, 1967). Teachers can help viewers find educative ways to participate in thinking for themselves in the presence of other people. ## XI. HOPEFUL FUTURES Given the effects of the image, how might thinking for oneself in the company of others find ways to create social relations grounded on the lively presence of the participants involved? How might thinking for oneself with others nurture our relational habitats the way many people protect Nature's habitat? To Canadian urban theorist Jane Jacobs, maintaining human habitats, whether in cities or in social relations, requires what she calls the preserving traits of values and behaviors that characterize human development over the centuries. To her, these human traits are aesthetic appreciation, fear of retribution, awe expressed as veneration, persuasiveness and corrective tinkering and contriving. We wake up by realizing the damaging effects of what we are doing, reclaim aesthetic appreciation of the world, tinker and contrive until we regain a sense of being alive in the presence of other people. As Jacobs put it, these preserving traits seem to have been components of humanity's makeup since time immemorial and are what we have at our disposal to work with as we maintain our human habitats. These saving traits establish and maintain social trust and motivate social love—two attitudes extinguished by the false presence of the other, but which are consistent with a resilient, resolute acceptance of reality, along with a sense that life is meaningful. The exceptional human ability to improvise comes to our aid. In contrast to deploying these saving traits, Jacobs observed a tendency in people to isolate themselves that may lead to personal collapse. She pointed out that personal collapse leads to a loss of cultural knowledge and skills required to correct and restabilize one's existence. American psychologist Marisa G. Franco (2022) recently wrote on friendship. She proposes some ways forward for friendship to regain its liveliness. Does her analysis of what is wrong with social relations support Baudrillard's theory and Jacobs's observations of personal collapse? Contemplating what is happening in natural, relational, personal, and mass media worlds offers people ways to tinker and contrive in the forward movement of thinking for themselves with others and as they hope together to enliven their social relationships. ## XII. ABDUCTION AND SOCIAL REALITY Hegel's is not the only way that the personal and social inform the intellect. If our current historical moment seeks the enlivening presence of reality, it makes a good offer that relies on perceptual and conceptual learning. As we think about thinking, we recall our reliance on induction as one way to investigate reality and deduction as another. A third method introduced in the twentieth century extends human capacity to perceive patterns in human interaction. That term is abduction. The third term is misleading since its common usage puts us in mind of child snatching, which is not what it is about. Abduction is a way of gathering information as it discovers identifiable patterns in social interaction. The approach is neither inductive nor deductive but is both and more besides. The term was coined by American philosopher C.S. Peirce (pronounced purse, 1839-1914). He worked on abduction his whole life. The story of his starting point is helpful in conveying what it is about. In 1879, Peirce (Ejsing 2006) was travelling on a coastal steamer from Boston to New York. He went ashore only to realize he had left his watch aboard ship, a Tiffany watch that meant a lot to him. He rushed back to his stateroom to discover the watch and his overcoat were missing. To find them, he lined up suspects aboard ship and asked if one of them had taken them. No one admitted the theft. He was determined to find the culprit. He stood in front of one man and accused him. The man denied it. Peirce later went to his house and found the watch and overcoat. Peirce concluded that abductive reasoning relies on discovery, a logic of guessing that must be fundamental to acquiring knowledge about all reality, not just the reality of crimes. He conceived a process of guessing in which a seeker moves back and forth from induction (gathering data bit by bit to build a theory) and deduction (relying on a theory to collect support from data). Abduction is a process of perceiving that relies on a theory to get it started. Reflecting on his effort to find watch and coat, Pierce might think 'the thief is someone who had quick access to my stateroom'. He holds that theory consciously because he acquired it by induction, deduction, or some other way. As he continues to observe his situation, that theory gets support from his capacity for receptivity, his submission to the situation in front of him. As he stands before the line up of people, he senses that the thief paused before he answered and looked away. Pierce learned from experience that people who lie offer a carefully composed response, although they may hesitate before speaking, while those who tell the truth tend to speak immediately in a confused manner. To use abduction actively, he collected a plausible group of people (those who had quick access to his stateroom) and lined them up. Then he suspended his theory and waited to receive from someone in the line-up evidence of calculation, purpose, and planning. Pierce may have only consciously realized afterward what the thief did to trigger his guess. The seeker is using theory and being receptive. Malcolm Gladwell described this receptivity in his popular book (Gladwell 2005). Abduction moves back and forth from induction to deduction, uses theory and suspends theory to wait receptively for evidence. Abductive mindfulness is graceful and mobile, like a mental ballet: suspend a theory, observe thin slices of information, i.e., bits and pieces of data. To Gladwell, thin slicing refers to an ability to find patterns in situations and behaviour based on small bits of experience. Gladwell relied on American psychologist John Gottman's ability to use thin slicing to investigate marital dysfunction. Gottman learned to detect marital dysfunction with great speed. The central indicator of marital dysfunction was a tone of voice and manner in one of the partners that suggested contempt. Contempt is a thin slice of a much bigger pattern. During observation, Gottman realized that having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stressful that it begins to affect your immune system. By watching videos of couples interact, he predicted with accuracy marriages that would last over the next 15 years and those that would not. For those who want to enliven the social relation, the example of a contemptuous tone of voice is instructive. The role of contempt is like disgust which has an effect of completely rejecting and excluding someone from community. A tone of contempt indicates that someone is in trouble; respect and its absence are most clearly communicated through tone of voice. Tone of voice is caught in an instant and resides in most utterances. As Gladwell put it, thin slicing is not an exotic gift; it is a central part of what it means to be human. In abductive reasoning, seekers are receptive to the reality of those who stand before them. During receptivity, an instantaneous guess does not present itself as a thought, although later someone may realize it worked as a good theory. Pierce set aside his theory about who stole the watch until he perceived a response that gave itself away. That evidence is only a hunch and must be verified by checking it against reality, in his case, by finding his stolen items. The television series House relies on abduction. It is easy for people to miss what is directly in front of them. Abduction suggests patterns that explain what is going on. Julie needs to be aware of the theories she uses to search for patterns in human experience. Identifying patterns that lie behind thin slices of experience leads to a better understanding of reality. An insight from Foucault (1979) reveals how we might begin to observe power operating, for example. Foucault directed our gaze (receptivity) to those who have been subjected to its use and abuse because effects of power shape the body. The movie Doubt, (Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams) demonstrates abductive reasoning, thin slicing and the misuse of power. The movie is about a Catholic parish school in the 1960s. Streep is its principal, an older nun working with a priest (Hoffman). Adams is a young teacher at the school. Streep comes to think there is something wrong in Hoffman's interaction with boys at the school (her theory). She confronts him with help from Adams. In this scene, Adams recounts an observation she made of a boy in her class after he returned from a private session with Hoffman. She described the way the boy re-entered the classroom and placed his head on his desk. His manner of laying his head down on his desk and staying silent was evidence to Adams that something was wrong. Hoffman demanded that Streep provide more evidence. She cited an observation of a boy who quickly pulled his hand away as Hoffman gestured toward him in the playground. In the movie, the second boy conveyed embodied evidence of being uncomfortable at school. Streep saw a larger pattern in these thin slices—action taken in private between powerful and powerless people. The privacy of sexual abuse withholds from public view the evidence of its harm. But the body keeps the score. The harm remains in the child (van der Kolk 2015). The movie demonstrates that abductive reasoning is risky. There are many reasons the movie is titled *Doubt*. Streep recognized a whole pattern in a small gesture and carried out an inquiry into Hoffman's behaviour. She had little support from her social context. It is isolating to see a dangerous pattern behind thin-slices if you are the only one who sees it—as whistleblowers can attest. Thinking for oneself in the company of others is not easy. ## XIII. CONFIGURING THOUGHT TO ORIENT OURSELFVES Does abduction help us think for ourselves in the company of others? Once we gain a whole world from childhood, how does sense data enter that meaning system so that concepts shift and change? Does thin-slicing help move us through Hegel's experiencing? What does an education include that helps us move forward in the way Hegel described and prepares us for problems Baudrillard identified? Suppose Julie grew up in a traditional society in which the whole world she got at home was echoed by her religious community, her schooling, and the town where she lived. Of course, she might imagine a different world as artists, poets, philosophers, and saints have done throughout history. There are two parts to the task of learning to think. There is her whole world on one hand, and on the other, the reality of living in a pluralistic, twenty-first century, global culture shared with people who acquired different whole worlds in childhood. How will Julie sort through her intellectual inheritance and select parts to keep and parts to release during the forward movement of her thought and the growth of her intellect? Let us consider a period characterized by upheaval equivalent, though not the same, as ours. In the 1700s, Kant introduced philosophical thinking to mark the end of medieval feudalism. He ascribed new rights to individuals who had not enjoyed them previously, e.g., a right to own personal property. In outlining modernity, he used a principled approach. A principle is a fundamental truth or proposition on which other statements (called maxims) depend. A principle informs the system of beliefs, opinions, and knowledge that someone holds. One of Kant's principles is Respect for Persons. Kant argued persuasively that rights must be associated with humanity itself, rather than with medieval privilege. What changed since Kant is the evolving sense of who is a Person. The principle of inclusion, emphasized in multicultural nations such as Canada, requires Julie to consider everyone she meets as a Person deserving of Respect. Yet her whole world was acquired in a middle-class, loving family that is happily connected to grandparents, uncles, aunt and cousins. Her family is white, Canadian, English-speaking, mentally fit, able-bodied, and heterosexual. How might her motivation to give everyone the Respect she shows her own people help her focus on the humanity she shares with all others? In her 'family religion' she believed that Persons are people who look, speak, and act like her. We are born human and enculturated in a specific human group. As this learning takes place, Julie's old concept of Person comes into conflict with a growing sense that she shares humanity with all others. Perceiving her uniqueness and common humanity and their impact on her concept of Person, is part of Julie's intellectual work. As mentioned, a principle is a generalizable statement that has maxims attached to it. Unlike rules, maxims are general rules or policies that do not have action embedded in them. A rule is a statement that tells us what to do and not do. We either break or keep rules. It is clear to others when we break or keep them. As examples, do not run in the hallways at school is a rule, just as is do not hit other children. Rule governed behaviour allows children to learn self-regulation, which is the most important skill to possess as they start school. Self-regulation is learned in healthy environments through adult/child mutual self-regulation (Clinton 2020). In Kant's view, after rules establish stable behaviour, without making children slavish, maxims come into play. A maxim looks like a rule but does not contain directions for how to act. If rules make children stop and regulate their behaviour, maxims cause them to stop, think, and decide how to act in specific situations. Suppose a school has the two rules mentioned. John is 11 years old and demonstrates self-regulation, but not slavishly so. As he walks down the hall, he sees a child slip and fall at the other end of the hall by a stairway. John uses the maxim help when you can (derived from the principle of Respect for Persons) and runs down the hall to assist the child who has fallen. He breaks the rule; he thinks with the maxim and acts. John believes that slapping someone on the back if they are chocking is the best thing to do (whether he is correct or not). In the lunchroom, he hits another child who has food caught in her throat. He breaks the rule; he thinks and acts with the maxim. Using maxims does not guarantee John will make no mistakes as he acts. Using maxims is an exercise in which John learns to act by learning from his mistakes and success and bases a sense of failure or success on remaining receptive to the lively presence of others. John is learning to apply maxims associated with the principle of Respect for Persons. Suppose the girl who is chocking in the lunchroom is standing on crutches. Instead of slapping her on the back, John asks a friend to stand beside her and goes to get her a glass of water. John learns from acting; he builds groundwork for receptivity inherent in abduction. As Kant asserted, maxims must work in experience even though we may come by them through conceptual learning (Kant, 1998). ## XIV. OPINION, KNOWLEDGE, AND BELIEF How might education move Julie and John forward in thinking for themselves in the company of others? In Western philosophical tradition, distinctions are made to help sort through the contents of a worldview and negotiate the confusion Baudrillard described. As one example, we can distinguish opinion, knowledge, and belief. The analysis philosophical tradition applies to these words is in direct opposition to Baudrillard's evil power games. Opinion, knowledge, and belief are understood in relation to each other by explaining how they are similar and different. First, an example. Think of the word light. What does it mean? Well, it depends. If we place light beside its opposite darkness, it means one thing. If we place it beside its opposite heavy, it means something different. We know what we mean by using the word light in contexts shaped by its opposites. Placing words like social and political on a continuum depicts their meaning in relation to each other—an approach that renders them impossible. If everything is social, then nothing is social is a judgment made by a philosophical tradition that analyses words using conceptual analysis, a practice that began in ancient Greece but got lost somewhere in the twentieth century (Urmson 1969). ## XV. OPINION What do we mean when we use the words opinion, knowledge and belief? Beginning with opinion, it is a judgment formed about a particular issue, or a view held about a conviction, usually in the form of a statement, such as this is very good wine. Opinion also applies to a judge's summary statement at the end of a trial. And there is the expression public opinion. The difference between one opinion and another seems to be the expertise or knowledge that stands behind it. A good judge of wine gives an opinion about its quality that we accept; we buy it and recommend it to others. This is quite different from a novice saying that a certain wine is good. That judgment depends on a discerning palate, but novices cannot yet gain widespread support for their judgment while they are still novices. pinion has taken on the relativizing strategies Baudrillard described, so we often say, well, that's just your opinion, to discredit someone's view—sometimes despite their expertise, knowledge or talent. Julie and John must learn to identify opinions they hold and ask themselves what justifies them—what evidence they have. They may also hold opinions they have little evidence for—but hold them none the less. As they learn to think with others, Julie and John need to be fully aware of the opinions for which they have evidence, expertise, and talent and those they do not. If COVID showed us anything, it revealed that people use very different sources of evidence for opinions they hold. Opinion often refers to preferences we think everyone should affirm. In considering the concept of public opinion, Hubert Dreyfus (2008) referred to Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). The Danish philosopher witnessed the emergence of modernity and saw that the public sphere was destined to become a detached world in which every person holds an opinion about and comments on all public matters without feeling the need for any firsthand experience, without having or wanting any responsibility for these matters (Dreyfus 2008). To Kierkegaard, commitment is essential to the vitality of our opinions. When they reflect on their opinions, John and Julie do not need to throw them away when others disagree. They need to ask whether they are unreflective popular opinions. What is essential as they learn to dialogue is that they realize and acknowledge when a statement is an opinion and distinguish it from statements that are knowledge or belief. Opinions are the shifting sands Wittgenstein described in the riverbed of our worldviews. ## XVI. KNOWLEDGE In contrast to an opinion, what is involved in coming to know something? We know what coffee smells like. We know how to get home from work. We know what our friends like to eat. We know these things based on convention—the name coffee was given to a beverage that smells like that and English speakers use that name, and on experience—we travel home repeatedly and get it right and we have made food our friends like and food they do not like, and we know the difference. In Kant's essay What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking (Kant 1998), he described how we use a naturally endowed "feeling" of left and right handedness and other senses to orient ourselves in space, e.g., in a dark room. He asserted that we also have the means to orient ourselves in thinking. Recall the nature of perceptual and conceptual learning. Kant used reason to sort through intellectual content to find a pathway that is continually open to perceptual and conceptual learning. While an analysis of his views is beyond the scope of the article, his distinction between knowledge and belief will help John and Julie negotiate their worldviews as they think for themselves in the company of other people. Knowledge refers to being aware of, able to recognize, acknowledge, discern, identify, distinguish, perform, admit, and express familiarity with something that we understand. There is development in knowing. We come to know something through a process of learning. When we know something, we can give evidence of our knowledge. Knowing is built up over time so that what we know involves the past and is demonstrated in the present. If we say we know the game of tennis, we demonstrate that knowledge by playing the game in front of people who watch us. As part of learning to think, we come to recognize what of our embodied thought is knowledge gained through testing the reality we work with scientifically, pragmatically, logically, or by careful, discerning observation, as German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1924-2009) proposed in his approach to human science inquiry. His investigative principle asks the question: What kind of knowledge is it that understands that something is so because it understands that it has come about so (Bellous and Clark 2022). Knowledge is the large rocks in Wittgenstein's riverbed. While they are weighty, solid, and impressive, flowing water sometimes shifts what we know, especially if the current becomes a torrent due to life hardships that threaten us. We use these rocks and step from one to the others as we think for ourselves during the growth of our intellect. Yet knowledge is always partial. As we learn to think well, we adopt an intellectual attitude of epistemological humility. ## XVII. BELIEF Belief is different than opinion or knowledge. It is the trust, acceptance, confidence, faith, or reliance we place in the groundwork of our personal and social identity, which includes the concepts we keep in our worldviews. Belief always has an object. We believe in a person, statement, or experience. We put faith in the economic Market, for example. We believe a friend who said he will give us a ride to work. Every worldview assigns different degrees of confidence to the concepts embedded in it. We believe the sun will come up tomorrow, whether we see it behind the clouds or not. If we had to wonder every night if it would rise next morning, we would not be well. We could not function effectively. Wittgenstein (1979) used a second analogy to describe the role belief plays in how we think and act. He said that assumptions (beliefs) are like the hinges of a door that must be firmly in place so the door can swing open. Sometimes we let the hinges get rusty. If Julie and John are to make progress in the art of thinking for themselves in the company of others, they need to maintain the hinges. They need to reflect on their beliefs, renew them when necessary, and act in alignment with them. Belief in the principle, Respect for Persons is formedal for them and shapes how they think, act, and converse with others. If knowledge operates in the past and present, belief is about the present and future. We cannot be certain about beliefs because their actualization has not happened yet. Suppose the friend who said he would drive us to work did not come. Through such experiences we learn how firmly to hold beliefs based on the cumulative effect of trusting people. Belief is intellectual assent that an account of an event is a true description. Yet if we say we hold a particular belief, the evidence is that we act on it. Belief is trusting that an action is the right one to take, as John did when he hit the girl who was chocking. The beliefs we use convey who we are. But they can be shallow. They can be incorrect because they are unfounded. Yet they may also become better informed. Beliefs can develop and increase in the wisdom they offer to us. Beliefs form essential parts of Wittgenstein's riverbed. He acknowledged that change is possible but there must be something that remains in place for us to recognize it as a river and for its water to flow freely. Beliefs shape identity. As we learn to think well with others, we ponder our beliefs and learn to use them wisely. In so doing, we acquire an intellectual attitude of existential confidence. Although Baudrillard accused modernity of failure to provide liberation, as one of its architects, Kant established guidelines for how we still expect to live together. For Kant, whatever our opinions, whatever we know, whatever we believe—how we treat people is non-negotiable. Kant situated moral responsibility as a duty of care to our own humanity and to the humanity of others. He outlined the complexity of those duties to self and others in The Metaphysics of Morals. To him, probing of the depths of the hear tis the beginning of all human wisdom. The sorting process is characterized by refusing to feel contempt for oneself or by giving in to overblown self-importance. Kant also asserted that having a conscience is an unavoidable fact (Kant 1996). Listening to one's conscience, informed by the riverbed of what we know, believe and opine, is the compass that guides us through life. Opinion, knowledge and belief are equally essential elements in every worldview. With our intellectual growth we learn to distinguish their differences and use them well in dialogue with other people. ## XVIII. CONCLUSION French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal described the growth of intellect. Using knowledge in the sense of the stock of knowledge acquired at birth and then in the sense of knowledge Kant explored, Pascal said that Knowledge has two extremes which meet. One is the pure natural ignorance of the infant at birth. The other is reached by great minds which have passed through the entire range of human knowledge, only to find that they know nothing of the truth and have come back to the same ignorance from which they started. This latter state is a wise ignorance which knows itself. Those who [live in a fortress] between these two extremes have put their natural ignorance behind them but have not yet attained wise ignorance. They have a smattering of knowledge and imagine that they understand almost everything. They are profoundly misguided and can do great damage (van de Weyer 1997). During the pattern identified by these three phases, we learn to think masterfully so that we engage thought intentionally. The whole world we got in childhood does not hold us hostage. As thinking moves forward, an issue we now face is the snowstorm of data we encounter daily. Kant's notion of a compass to orient us as we reflect on what we know, believe, and opine is one way to traverse the territory during a storm. Many questions remain in learning to think together. How do we prevent thinking about thinking from becoming a crushing burden? A relentless nagging that robs us of sleep. When does thinking get in the way of living? What does it take to keep from believing every thought that flits across the mind? Where and how can we find safe spaces to think well with others? How do we find the time to talk together? How might thinking about thinking stifle the liveliness of our own being and create an eternal loop of questions that have few answers, until we slide into cynicism? Why should we learn to think together? What are the benefits? Two benefits stand out. Following our own riverbed of thought using Kant's compass to guide thinking for ourselves in the company of others is one benefit. Configuring thought by focusing on the principles and values that are most significant to us is a second benefit. The forward movement of thinking for oneself together with others is motivated by a passionate desire to be the kind of people we can respect.

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