Teaching Philosophy

In the Baltimore Sun, thanks to Stephen Kiehl: Bingo! Another Fallacy. The bingo cards we generated, along with our cheat sheet, are also available via the Sun: Play ‘Debate Fallacy Bingo’ during final presidential debate.

A 59-year old Home Depot employee from West Linn, OR won the Great American Thinker contest last month. I am not familiar with the contest, but it looks essentially like an oratory / essay contest. The web site (linked previously) has the finalist essays - which certainly should be usable in a CT course.

Much has been said about the lessons of Vietnam. What do you see as the lessons of Iraq?

Presidential Debate 1, Question 4 Static Link

Using your word ‘fundamental’ - are there fundamental differences between your (McCain) approach and Senator Obama’s approach to get us out of the financial crisis?

Presidential Debate 1, Question 2 Static Link

A  famous blog in philosophy circles recently called for philosophers to be more engaged in pointing out fallacies in presidential debates. Um…. This is new?

I’m trying to collect as many of these speeches for analysis in my CT courses as possible, and I’ve done so for years. If anyone is interested in making comparisons between the rhetoric of the debates in 2008 and 2004, here is my ‘debate browsers’ from 2004:

Debate 1 (Foreign Policy) Static Link

Debate 2 (Foreign & Domestic Policy) Static Link

Debate 3 (Domestic Policy) Static Link

New worlds for thought Businesses hiring Phil majors in Oz, from Sydney Morning Herald.

Individual profiles of Philosophy student - An accidental path to philosophy From Sydney Morning Herald

An interesting story here from the Times (UK).

The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting story, Just Think: It’s important, about Peter Ellerton, who is trying to get more support for pre-collegiate instruction in Philosophy in Australia.  Does anyone know if there is an Australian Association of Philosophy Teachers? Is there anything that we who are members of the AAPT or the APA sub-committee on pre-collegiate instruction can do to help?

From the guardian, speculating on why it is so poorly attended by British Professional Philosophers:

Broadening British horizons

For some philosophers, attending the World Congress in Seoul is a huge privilege. So why does it leave British delegates cold?

I’m not convinced that the problem the author correctly diagnoses has much of anything to do with the national psyche of the British (as I doubt there are many professional American Philosophers there either) - I think it is simply a factor of the ‘professionalization’ of the discipline.

[Incidentally, I happened to click on the ‘Full Subject Profile’ link under the university rankings on the right of the page, and found this: Philosophy. It claims, among other things, that if you study philosophy “You will be considered by employers to be an all-rounder - mature, thoughtful, rational and articulate - which is no bad thing.” I wonder if that claim is based on empirical evidence, or is merely wishful thinking. I my experience, employers most frequently thought I had spent four years studying Christian Theology and Ethics (i.e. Aquinas).]

The Telegraph has a story on Anthony Flew’s recent comments on Richard Dawkins:

Richard Dawkins branded ’secularist bigot’ by veteran philosopher

And the Guardian has an article introducing Chalmers and Clark’s extended mind thesis, based on (apparantly) Chalmers’ talk at the World Congress of Philosophy:

I think, therefore iPod: Is an iPod part of your mind? The question is not as daft as it may sound