What Does it Mean to be Self-Taught?

Philosophers throughout the ages including many of the most preeminent ones such as Rene Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and John Locke were keenly interested in the epistemological inquiry of how best to gain knowledge. It’s very much in this vein that I have, despite having meritorious thoughts on the matter, often struggled with the question of the meaning of being self-taught. To better round out my understanding, I recently had the opportunity to propose this question to my philosophy club at our most recent meeting. As always, we enjoyed a spirited discussion which involved different and differing viewpoints. What ensued not only helped me better clarify my thinking on this question but also helped me reach a personally satisfying conclusion.

The basis of my dilemma on this question is that, at least in general parlance, individuals who independently obtain knowledge in a given area outside of a formal setting are referred to as being self-taught. Such individuals may obtain knowledge through a plethora of available means such as books, online tutorials and presentations, and even highly-targeted paid webinars and courses from alternative educational institutions such as Udemy, Coursera, and Khan Academy. My fundamental stance, unpopular as it is, is that such individuals are not self-taught. While I have moderate success in convincing interlocutors that those independently learning through means such as Udemy, Coursera, Khan Academy, and those absorbing recorded college classroom lectures made publicly available through platforms such as YouTube and OpenCourseWare are not self-taught, I’ve been less convincing that autodidacts who gained knowledge through the study of textual instruction (i.e., books, magazines, technical journals etc.) are not self-taught. For purposes of this post I will refer to the autodidacts of the latter type as book learners.

The gist of my objection to the categorization of book learners as self-taught is that they—intrinsically motivated as they may be—read, comprehend, and internalize the thoughts of another person (natural or artificial) that is conveyed to them in textual format. At least to me, there is no appreciable difference between invoking the mind of another human being through their spoken versus their written word; in other words, whether one absorbs another person’s analysis and explanation of a topic through their written word via books, magazines, or journals etc., or absorbs their explanation and analysis through their spoken word delivered in a classroom lecture, one is in both cases being taught through the reasoned guidance of someone other than oneself.

Almost immediately after I provided my opening remarks to my posed topic discussion, one member suggested that book learners are self-taught but not the originators of the knowledge. I had to disagree with this assertion because the origination of knowledge does not to me seem a sine qua non for being self-taught. To wit, it is completely possible for a person to, through a process of independent discovery devoid of external instruction, form certain justified true beliefs (i.e., gain knowledge) regarding a given matter that someone else may have previously formed through their own independent discovery. In such cases, though the individual did not originate such knowledge due to the mere fact that such knowledge already existed, such individual is nonetheless properly categorized as self-taught. Hence, to me it does not seem reasonable to exclude individuals from the category of being self-taught if they have not themselves originated the knowledge obtained.

Another member, while acknowledging the fact of the invocation of another person‘s instruction through the written word, nonetheless asserted that look learners are self-taught because the difference between book learners who receive written instruction from someone else versus those who receive verbal instruction from someone else is that the former cannot engage the book in dialogue. Regrettably, this was also unconvincing to me because of my own direct and lived experience after having gone through extensive post-secondary schooling.

Consider that most American universities operate a lecture-based pedagogy that does not resemble a Socratic dialogue-styled pedagogy. A very convenient example that I can recount to elucidate my point is when I took my first graduate-level corporate taxation course. Bear in mind that the classes in this course were three hours long the entire academic semester. During the first 10-15 minutes of class our professor discussed a type of tax-free transaction called a like-kind exchange. I had trouble understanding the professor’s explanation of the mechanics of the transaction and requested a fleshed-out explanation. In response, the professor, in approximately two minutes, hastily explained the mechanics in a way that was not helpful to me. When I sought clarification on the main points he had reiterated he appealed that he had a lot of material to cover for that evening’s class so he could not afford to spend any more time on it but, to his credit, he asked me to come see him in his office after class.

The problem was that following the discussion on like-kind exchanges, for the remaining two hours and 45 minutes, the lecture was dedicated to several varieties of Section 351 transactions. One cannot understand the mechanics of Section 351 transactions unless one understands the mechanics of like-kind exchanges, which meant that sitting through the remainder of the class was an excruciating waste of my time. When I went to his office after class, he took a calm eight or nine minutes to properly explain the workings of like-kind exchanges to me. However, afterward I had to spend the entire weekend self-studying the course textbook to understand the varieties of Section 351 transactions which were the actual subject of study for that evening. It was precisely because of experiences like this that I usually didn’t bother asking questions in class. 

After relaying this firsthand experienced, I asked the group that if one’s formal education system tacitly disallows dialogue by impelling students to resort to book learning, then, according to this criterion, would not the graduates of formal academic institutions also meet the definition of being self-taught. Though members certainly began mulling over this thorny objection, unfortunately there was no offering that would have me reconsider that this was not a sufficiently meritorious viewpoint.

Of course, this did not stop at least a couple of other members to reassert that the acquisition of knowledge outside of a formal academic system was tantamount to being self-taught. This seems a flawed position because individuals can obtain knowledge through channels such as apprenticeships or even by discussing things with their colleagues or peers in informal settings. For example, as a specialist in a niche area of U.S. taxation, I routinely get asked to share my knowledge regarding international tax matters at informal lunches or other such networking events for tax professionals. So, when the recipients of my thoughts regarding my knowledge and understanding form justified true beliefs outside of a formal academic setting, are they self-taught? The answer is obviously in the negative. Thus the acquisition of knowledge outside of a formal academic setting is itself not a sufficient, however necessary, condition for the acquirer of such knowledge to be self-taught.

In finality, on one extreme, those who obtain knowledge firsthand through experimentation, observation, and trial and error without the benefit of external instruction are clearly self-taught. On the other end of the spectrum, those who were given their ideas from someone else, irrespective of whether they were given such ideas through verbal or textual means, that they just regurgitate are clearly not self-taught. This was my position coming into the discussion. However, the refinement of my thinking on this matter as a consequence of our discussion allowed me to think about it in a more precise way such that it allowed for what I thought was an important realization; specifically, both book learners along with the beneficiaries of verbal instruction in formal academic systems alike become self-taught only when they leverage their knowledge obtained through written or verbal instruction to expand the implications of that already known to form new justified true beliefs. Thus it is only when such individuals go beyond their previously-obtained knowledge through formal or informal instruction and independently engage in observation, reasoning, experimentation, or a combination of such to form new justified true beliefs without the benefit of further external formal or informal instruction that they can be properly labeled as self-taught.