Hubert L. Dreyfus

Hubert Dreyfus is a famous humanist and professor of philos-ophy. To begin with, we will take one of his later works, “On the internet” (Dreyfus, 2001). In this work he makes a persistent and decided demand of the body and reflects on the consequences of the disappearance of it and the sensory relationship among people within the Net, a fact that directly influences the learning process. He examines the lack of embodied presence brought about by the advent of the World Wide Web. At present, anyone at any location and at any time can express their thoughts to oth-ers. The Internet has provided an unprecedented opportunity for people to communicate without actually being in the presence of other people. From his point of view this new context of com-munication has effects, both positive and the negative, in relation to this disembodied mode of operation in the world.

For Dreyfus the body is fundamental for the learning process as the body is the whole of the personal abilities such as interpersonal relationships and it is within these we discover a relevant place for language. A face to face environment encourages and motivates the students by means of self-expression through movement, a fact that is lost within the Net. Consequently, this lack of physical presence and sensory input means that distance education has a greater dependence on the context, at least, in the beginning of the

student’s learning process. The sensory ability of our body and a person’s disposition is what makes the involvement within society, fitting into a community, possible. Having arrived at this point, if we achieve a parallelism with the learning process to get a certain type of contents (for example, awakening sensitivities as in our question under study), we will see that they are closely linked with interpersonal relationships and, therefore, the subjective connota-tions constantly present. This fact obliges us to look for methods and mechanisms that give us support and help us throughout this process to get an appropriate and useful apprenticeship.

As Dreyfus says, accurately, in his thesis’s statement: “In sum, as long as we continue to affirm our bodies, the Net can be use-ful to us in spite of its tendency to offer the worst of a series of asymmetric trade-offs: economy over efficacy in education, the virtual over the real in our relation to things and people, and anonymity over commitment in our lives”. In other words, use the Web carefully, but don’t let it become your reality. Certainly Dreyfus’ book is reminder that chats, blogs, social networks, forums, and the endless possibilities of the Web are not reality, though they can be tools to help us as we live in reality.

1.8. Socrates

A Socratic dialogue is an exchange of thoughts with the goal of finding an answer to a particular question. According to it, the central feature is Socrates’ way of asking questions (ques-tion matters, provoke participants, search for tensions and con-flicts between the stakeholders opinions, and so on), frequently referred to beliefs, where sustained cross-examination and the use of counter-examples reveal contradictions that would oth-erwise go unrecognised. Socratic dialogue is characterised by an incessant inquiry to seek the truth. Thus, Socratic dialogue is a mechanism for identifying incoherence and inconsistency in our own and others’ sets of beliefs.

From a Socratic point of view the conversation is meant to be a dialogue, rather than a formal debate or informal discussion. The participants try to understand each other and engage in a com-mon enterprise. This does not necessarily mean that participants have to find a consensus on the answer to the question in order to have a successful dialogue. An awareness of the complexity of the investigation is often much more satisfactory than a con-structed consensus. The attempt to think carefully, deliberately and in depth distinguishes itself from other forms of conversation like debates or brainstorming sessions. In sum, in this method, participants try to investigate in a more or less structured way the truth and the value of their opinions in attempting to respond to a self-chosen question. In engaging thoroughly in the investiga-tion with a suitable quesinvestiga-tion (the dialogue’s focus), sooner or later one can experience and investigate the very subject one is talking about through her own behaviour in the here and now, or even an experience undergone in the past of one or more of the participants. When participants engage in Socratic dialogue more than once, the urge to defend own judgements is replaced slowly by an attitude of constructive doubt and constant investigation.

The evidence of our understanding is to be found in our actions because according to Socratic dialogue, true understand-ing leads to correct behaviour. For this reason, engineerunderstand-ing students, having finished their degree and while studying for it, are responsible for defining their professional goals, taking into account the interests of their colleagues and appropriate ethical action. At that point, they need to explore, for example, the boundaries of their responsibilities and what it implies for the development of personal and professional skills related to all of the ethical questions raised; questions concerning integ-rity, responsibility, flexibility, success, motivation, effectiveness, mutuality, leadership, empowerment, openness, autonomy etc. In this way, students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own thinking and at the same time stimulated to think together,

with their colleagues. The Socratic dialogue constitutes an ethi-cal practice searching for fair actions in order to consider ethiethi-cal issues in accordance with the way one thinks and lives.