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April 10, 2008

As Erickson, Peters and Strommer point out, "feelings of isolation get in the way of learning" (79), so it is helpful to create an environment where students can get to know one another. They suggest some interesting exercises.

Source: Bette LaSere Erickson, Calvin B. Peters, Diane Weltner Strommer, Teaching First-Year College Students. San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2006

Philosophical Problem Group Discussion Exercise: John Immerwahr, Villanova University, 1/24/08

A way to accomplish many objectives is to give the students a philosophical problem to discuss. Here is a simple way to do the exercise:

The case: a group of space aliens want to find a planet as a site for a interstellar communication station (really it is a planet sized cell-phone tower). To do this, they need to destroy all of the life on the planet. They have selected an ideal planet for their purposes. The planet is richly inhabited with plants, fish, and insects, but there are no sentient beings. Butterflies are the most evolved species on the planet. The aliens have ethical rules that prevent them from destroying such life without permission from the closest sentient beings. As it happens, earth is the only inhabited planet anywhere near the planet in which they are interested. Their code requires them to select four people (your group) to request permission. If you grant them permission to destroy all life on this planet, they will give each of you $50,000. Do you give them permission?

This forces students to discuss the question of whether non-human life has value. The interesting thing about the case is that it can be done quickly TΦ101 has found that different individuals and groups come out in different places.

Sophist Theory of Justice Discussion Exercise: John Immerwahr, Villanova University, 1/24/08.

For an intro class that starts with Plato it can be helpful to begin by introducing students to the thinking of the Sophists (which helps them understand what it is that Plato is reacting to). As it turns out, the Sophist theory is extremely easy for students to understand, and it resonates with many students (especially from the business school) just as it did in classical Athens. For this first class exercise, the instructor created a text that is adapted from some Sophist texts, based both on a frament from Antiphon and from a speech by Callicles.

Antiphon's Theory of Justice

This passage is a modernization and adaptation of the thinking of several ancient sources. Most of it comes from a fragment by a philosopher named Antiphon, who lived in the Fifth Century BCE. Antiphon was what the Greeks called a "Sophist" (and we will talk more about the Sophists in the weeks to come).

The answer to the first question is fairly obvious and can be learned from simple observation. People are innately selfish. Left to their own devices they would take whatever they wanted and kill anyone who stood in their way. But individuals have found that although they desire to act selfishly, they also don't like it when other selfish individuals hurt them or take their things. So they decide to form a society to protect themselves from the selfishness of others. They all agree to restrain their natural selfishness if others will do the same, and they hire police officers to punish or kill those who act selfishly. The actions they have agreed not to do, they call "wrong," and the actions that remain they call "right," but these terms don't have any other meaning other than what the society gives them. (We can see this when we notice that the definitions of right and wrong change from place to place, so that something that is right in one place is wrong in another.) Eventually people hire school teachers and religious leaders, and they pay them to tell everyone, especially children, that there is a god who made the world and who also made these rules, so that right and wrong come from this god, rather than from humans. They teach that god will be angry if they break the rules, and will punish people even if they are not caught. After they hear enough of this, the children internalize it, so that when they break the rules they punish themselves by feeling guilty.

Once we understand that, we see the answer to the second question. The only reason to avoid the wrong actions is to avoid being caught and punished. Really smart people, however, can take the best of both worlds. When they can get it away with it, they will act naturally, and take whatever they want and even kill if they wish to. But when people are looking, the smart people behave according the rules, give money to the church, and pretend they are outraged by others who break the rules. So the smart people get the advantages of living in a society where people don't hurt them, but they also get to hurt others.

In your group, discuss the following questions:

How does Antiphon think we should live?
How does he defend this theory?
What evidence does he use?
Do you think many people today agree with Antiphon?
Do you agree with Antiphon? Why?

For the original Antiphon fragment, see The PreSocratics. (1966) Ed. Philip Wheelwright (New York: MacMillan, p.259). See also Callicles speech in Plato's Gorgias, starting at 482c.

Survey of Attitudes on Issues that Will Come up Later in the Course: Gabriel Rockhill, Villanova University, 4/8/08

During the first day of class, the instructor gives out a survey of student reactions and attitudes toward various topics that will be discussed later in the course. For example, if feminism will be a topic in the course, one of the questions might be, "What do you think of when you hear the word 'feminism'?" Or, "Are humans free, or is everything we do a product of our genetics and our environment?" This gives the student an exposure to some of the topics that will be covered during the semester and gives the instructor and idea of some of the attitudes that students bring to the course. The results can also be used as a discussion starter when those topics come up in the course, so the class on feminist theory might start out by the instructor listing some of the findings from the original survey. It would also be possible to give the same survey at the end of the semester and then have students compare their original answers with what they say now."

Discussion of Course Title: Katherine Eltringham, Villanova University, 1/24/08

This material was developed for the first day of class of a course entitled, "Basic Philosophical Questions," and would need to be adapted to different course titles.

Basic – Basic here means “forming or serving as the foundation” – the fundamental aspects. It does NOT mean “simplest, easiest, lowest level”, for while this course is basic, it is certainly not easy.

This word “basic” comes from the Greek word basis, which means 1) “a stepping, a step”, 2) “the power to step” and 3) “that whereon one stands”.

1) implies a movement, an existential commitment expressed physically. One must step into philosophy, step into a new perspective on the world, human actions and passions. The movement into philosophy requires shifting one’s mind into different perspectives, balancing viewpoints, but it also requires

2) the ability to make that movement. One has to willingly commit oneself to the ideas one experiences in something more like empathy than sympathy. But this movement lastly requires

3) some place or foundation from which to make that movement. This last element is comprised of your own life experiences and intuition, but it is strengthened by the skills and knowledge you acquire as you learn and appropriate the ideas and wisdom of others.

This course will serve as your basis not only for further philosophical studies, but for life itself. Because (as we shall read), “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

In this course we will take a look at the “ground” on which we stand, and we will attempt to understand this ground as it has been perceived, i.e. as meaning and truth – this ground is being itself, the ability to Love and understand, it is also beauty and the human power to judge.

The real ground on which we “stand” is act itself – in other words, our standing is the ground, in a sense, on which we stand. This is something of a paradox, but not if you think of act as definitive of being, not vice versa.

(The word paradox comes from the Greek paradoxon, which meant “a statement contrary to accepted opinion”, and has come to mean “a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement, even if actually well-founded”. Note, what is paradoxical is not irrational.)

Philosophical – The word “philosophy” comes from two Greek words philos and sophia meaning the love of wisdom.

Philosophy is based on Love, and we shall see that it is this that grounds and defines the human person, and in particular, the philosophical soul.

It is LOVE that impels one to make the movement into philosophy, it is LOVE that enables one to see the world through another’s eyes and ideas, it is LOVE that motivates one to pursue the long and circuitous journey towards truth, beauty, freedom.

Understanding the primacy and nature of LOVE in integral to understanding philosophy, which is why much philosophical discussion/debate revolves around LOVE.

In Philosophy, love is not merely a feeling (which is passive); rather, it is active, and as a part of this active realization of LOVE, philosophy acknowledges the responsibility attached to LOVE.

The LOVE of wisdom implies something far more powerful than curiosity – it points to something deeper – something that has to do with the meaning of personhood. The human person (homo philosophicos) alone raises the philosophical question – we interrogate ourselves.

We have a paradoxical state of existence, and it is this paradox that the pursuit of philosophy attempts to answer. We are both spirit and body, and we partake of each world. We know what we can and cannot know about ourselves.

The ancient Delphic Oracle commanded (as inscribed at its entrance) “gnothi seauton” (“know thyself”). We both know what we are and know that we cannot fully know what we are, and we marvel at both.

The human person embarks on the philosophical journey to attain that which is beyond knowledge – wisdom, or comprehensive understanding. The tool with which man is equipped to deal with the truth of being is not knowledge, but understanding.

Questions – The word “question” comes from the Latin verb quaerere, which means “to seek”. Philosophy is about questioning, or seeking.

Notice this course is not called “Basic Philosophical Answers”, because there are not answers in the simple sense.

The questions which the very first philosophers raised, and which have characterised the philosophical tradition since them, are still the questions with which philosophers wrangle today.

It is not that the end (telos) of philosophy is asymptotic – the lack of grand answers to the greatest questions of all humanity does not indicate a failure on the part of philosophy. Philosophy can help one to achieve “answers” or rather reasons (logoi) in one’s own life, but there is not one single grand universal answer, except, perhaps, fulfilment and the achievement of some degree of wisdom IN the seeking itself.

In the philosophical pursuit (seeking) a human person is most fully him/herself. Seeking helps to develop in a person, the philosophical attitude, as it is closely linked with LOVE.

Seeking is a reaching out for something more beyond: it is a paradoxical act inasmuch as one must be open to seek for what is beyond, and at the same time, only seeking opens the person for the beyond.

Seeking is a type of questioning – it is philosophical questioning, which is distinguished from sceptical, cynical or any other sort of mistrustful questioning. Because the philosophical questioning is defined by Love and motivated by wonder, a cheerful self-possession and confidence issues such that the seeker is in no position of doubt or insecurity because he is seeking. Because of this, we might say that seeking is finding.

2) queries the absoluteness of this realm as the telos (end/ limit) of meaning, and

3) relativises the domain of practical knowledge in the vision of the real Truth of Being, appealing to the transcendent in man which denies that he is limited merely to the phenomenal plane of existence. Wonder and awe lead man away from his complacency to acknowledge that his meaning and the meaning of the world is beyond him.

Aristotle says “All men by nature desire to know.” Meaning that it is natural to us to wonder, and he implies that this is our fundamental (most basic) desire, i.e. wonder itself is our basis for life. Thus the life of the pursuit of wisdom, i.e. philosophy, is the supreme human life.

He says that evidence for this is our delight in the senses for its own sake rather than for any further end. The senses are natural to us, and sense enters into everything we do, whether utilitarian or not. We especially value sight as the sense that best enables us to recognise things and most reveals the distinguishing features of things.

That we value most the sense that is most disclosive is suggestive that all sensitive life, and intellective life as well, will be for the sake of knowing. The initial use of the term eidenai may be to cover perceptive and intellectual knowing.

Sight most reveals differences and so provokes our intellectual development. Sense-perception is a discriminatory faculty: it primarily discerns differences and picks things out rather than, as we might say, pictures, presents or represents the world.

Giving Students a Short Survey And Asking Them to Discuss Areas Where They Disagree. Renée Smith and Dennis Earl. "Getting Started: A First-Day Activity in Philosophical Thinking." Teaching Philosophy 28:3 (2005): 246-261.

See the abstract below. The general idea is to give the students a short survey with questions such as "Does morality depend on the existence of God?" Students then break up into groups and debate questions where they disagree. The authors then use these discussions to illustrate philosophy topics and concepts. Here is the abstract itself: "Given the inexperience, misconceptions and misgivings students often bring to a first course in philosophy, we present an activity that acquaints students with the main areas of philosophical inquiry and the tools philosophers use. Students engage in philosophical thinking by reflecting on and answering questions, defending and discussing their answers, and modifying or rejecting views in light of this discussion. The activity introduces students to conceptual analysis, argument, thought-experiment, and the use of counterexamples while simultaneously emphasizing and illuminating students’ natural tendency to think philosophically." The article also includes some transcripts of student discussions.