Teaching Philosophy

Hi all - I’ve been working hard all semester getting the new AAPT members-only section up and running. Now that it is running, I’m moving this blog over to that server. The new url is: http://pbradley.philosophyteachers.org/

I’ll be moving the archive over the next few months, but don’t expect any new posts here - all my energies are focused over there right now, so nothing new will be posted here.

I snapped this on my way out of MI, where I’ve been hiding for the past 5 weeks. This is in Shelby, MI on MI 31. (you will probably have to click on it to read the signs).

Actually the first time I read it, I read the phrase ‘Jean Paul Sartre’ as part of the sentence, and assumed that the sign had been placed there BY the Assembly of God church - i.e. “… is not to choose Jean Paul Sartre”. It was only after seeing it on my bike that I realized it was meant to be a quote - i.e. “… is not to choose.’ -Jean Paul Sartre”.

Pete Mandik over at ‘Brain Hammer‘ posted these the other day:

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

If there is anyone out there who has missed the whole ‘lolcat‘ phenomenon (some might call it a ‘meme’), check out the discussion on the language log: Lol-Lexicography. (Actually, there were a number of posts on the phenomenon back in Spring of ‘07. This particular one is highly entertaining.)

From the Wall Street Journal horoscope!

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): You may feel defensive about some philosophic position or a particular concept but you can generally support yourself well. Separate your ego from the beliefs that you hold.

And notice, it might be a good time to assign a paper to Cancers:

CANCER (June 21-July 22): You are able to express yourself succinctly and accurately.

[From: Your Daily Horoscope - UPI.com]

The unexamined life is not living, but is the unexamined course worth giving? Is there any value in giving in-class blue book exams in philosophy? Let’s exclude logic and critical thinking, what is the advantage to timed exams?

I give exams, but I’ve gotten away from in-class and gone completely over to take homes because it allows students the space to work out insights, to be able to quote and cite works they are engaging, and to print out the paper in a font that is much easier on the eyes than their hand-scrawled chicken scratch. The exercise seems a better facsimile of the philosophical process, although it does keep me from being able to ask straight forward knowledge recall questions like you get with matching, short answer, or fill in the blanks. But, let’s be honest, in a week’s time that short term info is gone anyway and it can be asked for creatively in a well-worded essay question.

So, is there value in a timed in-class philosophy exam? Is there a reason for the blue book blues?

I’m trying to put together a grant to support the development of a system to collect, archive, and analyze examples for use in CT instruction across the curriculum. And I’m looking for both comments & collaborators. Here’s the 100 word summary:

Critical Thinking is central to a liberal education, but is rarely the subject of direct instruction. Integrating direct instruction in CT into courses across the curriculum requires significant collaboration amongst faculty from many disciplinary backgrounds. The grantee will work with local faculty and nationally recognized experts in CT to collect, digitize, archive, and analyze ‘teachable moment’ examples of informal reasoning into an open, web-based database, which then can be used to support direct CT instruction across the curriculum. Such a system will not only improve ours’ students CT skills; but ultimately students around the nation and world as well.

And here’s the abstract:

While Critical Thinking (CT) can be taught in any academic domain, it rarely receives sustained and direct attention outside Philosophy. Research has shown that stand-alone generalized courses in CT that are offered by many Philosophy Departments are less effective at cultivating CT skills than integrating small amounts of direct instruction into a multiplicity of academic contexts (Hatcher, 2006). This integrated approach poses its own challenges: there are few forums for discussing CT across the curriculum, and none for sharing examples of CT in action across the disciplines.

The grantee will work with local faculty as well as nationally recognized experts in CT to collect, digitize, archive, and analyze ‘teachable moment’ examples of informal reasoning that are currently in use in our classrooms, regardless of medium or intellectual domain. The faculty members who collect the examples will provide expository and critical prose, which will be subjected to peer review, to create ‘modules’ that will support direct instruction in CT in any context. The resultant modules will be presented to the students via the web, along with standard ‘web-2.0’ functionality that allows for student feedback, commentary, rating systems, saving to a ‘portfolio,’ and social networking. They can also be printed as ‘thin’ textbooks to support direct instruction of CT. Faculty at other institutions will ultimately be invited to participate, not just as users but as contributors.

By facilitating collaboration amongst faculty across the liberal arts, such a system will improve ours students’ CT skills, which is core to our mission. The materials developed, as well as the process of collaboration that underlies the integration of direct instruction across the disciplines, will be shared with our peer institutions initially, and ultimately nationally. In the end, this open, web-based CT instructional material will enhance CT teaching across any institutional or state lines.

I’m interested in any comments you might have. And, if you’re interesting in collaborating (pending the grant’s approval, of course), there are many ways to do so. We’ll be looking for philosophers to:

• submit materials (i.e. the fallacious letter to the editor in your local paper),
• write an analysis of an example we already have,
• act as a peer reviewer for the content as it is developed,
• act as ‘editors’ for sections of the database (i.e. ‘fallacies of relevance’, ’scientific reasoning: observation studies’, etc.)

I have a student writing a paper on this, and it behooves me to understand what he is talking about.

According to Catholic orthodoxy, God consists of three different Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  How can that be?  Are they the same thing or three different things? 

If they are the same thing, then they have the same properties (by the indiscernibility of identicals).  But based on what the Bible says, they seem to have different properties.  For instance, sometimes the Son speaks to the Father, which suggests that they are doing different things at different times.  If they have different properties, then they are different things (by the contrapositive of the indiscernibility of identicals).  But this conclusion is polytheistic heresy from a Catholic standpoint.

Is there any other way out of this?  Perhaps they partially overlap: they have a common part (a unique divine essence?) but they also have distinct parts (e.g., the Son has his mortal incarnation as a part unique to him). Then we could say that they are “the same God” in the sense of sharing the same divine essence as a common part, but “different Persons” in the sense that they also have their own different parts with different properties.  At the moment, this is the only solution that makes sense to me.

Would this solution be remotely acceptable to the Catholic Church?  Does anyone know what the Church’s official view on this is?  What about other Christian denominations?

The AAPT (of which I am a member) and the APA (ditto) are once again offering a teaching seminar for graduate students in Philosophy. I was never able to attend the seminar when I was a grad student (Temple was too cheap back then), but I’ve heard great things about it.

The application is: http://www.philosophyteachers.org/Teaching_Seminar_App.pdf

In one of my current classes, 4 out of 13 students are regularly missing classes and skipping many of the assignments and some of the quizzes.  At this rate, they are falling behind and will have a hard time passing the class.  I hope it’s still early enough for them to catch up, but I wonder if there is anything I can do besides warning them.  I have mentioned to them that it’s important to come to class and do the assignments, and I even emailed them to ask whether they would come to class, turn in their work, etc.  But my efforts don’t seem to make a difference.  Any thoughts on how to get students like this to engage with the class?

Jonathan Wolff has an article in the Guardian on academic humor - including retelling the legendary stories of Sidney Morgenbesser’s ‘yeah yeah’ comment at Columbia. See:
Philosopher goes into a pub and says to the barman …