ABSTRACT
Mc Peck champions the idea that significant thought is domain-specific. He reaches conservative pedagogic conclusions because his emphasis on the mutual exclusivity of cognitive domains implies lengthy periods of induction to them. Oakeshott is correct to draw attention to the possibility of confusion between different categories of description and explanation. His mistake is in believing that the categories are capable of being distinguished comprehensively; that a 'criterion' could be found in order to determine 'the relative validity of any world of experience', and to distinguish it from others, obviating the error and confusion which 'follow from a failure to determine the exact character and significance of scientific or historical experience'. Oakeshott refers to the Platonic concept of the dialectic as the source of his notion of 'coherence'. The true form of experience, he says, is argument. Language is enmeshed in textures of human thought and social practices.
