Personally, I think a mix works best. Its hard to thrust people into difficult texts unless you give a good intro into what exactly the author is trying to do, and that, of course, means bringing up the problem to be addressed. So I'd recommend introducing a classical philosophical question, and then walking students through a classic approach to the question. This gives the students a perspective from which to approach the text, which will hopefully help them out in reading it. I don't want other people to be like me, fuming at Descartes upon the first read, thinking, "What the hell is the point? He sounds like he's stoned. I miss Plato."
I'd also recommend short (1 page) exegesis papers, in which students were told to recapitulate key portions of the text, whether an argument or defining a problem. Since it's intro, I'd recommend these papers be assigned after the class in which the key portion was discussed. Repitition is the....you know. (Also, then your tests can be drawn from the weekly papers, cutting down on student confusion.)
Aren't those basically the two approaches available for designing any syllabus?
The other downside for the historical approach, potentially, is that you have to address somehow those historical problems of context, culture, continuity... not that undergraduates won't make wierd historical claims in their papers whatever you do.
I teach the historical version, with the twist that all of the historical texts I use are dialogues, and the students at the end of the course have to write their own philosophical dialogue. A typical example of my syllabus is here.
I'm actually inordinately fond of my own intro course. I love the books, and the use of dialogues gives me a lot of chances to talk about the nature of philosophy.
Since it's intro, I'd recommend these papers be assigned after the class in which the key portion was discussed.
However, assigning the paper before the class can get the students thinking more spontaneously, get them engaged with the problems. (This works a lot better if the exercises are ungraded.)
Eurgh. I still remember with a certain amount of peevishness losing credit on a high school social studies examination for failing to identify the historical period that came to an end with the beginning of WW I in 1914 as the 'Victorian period'. My protests that she'd been dead for over a decade at that point cut no ice.
To each his own, but, for intro, I really believe that the benefits of getting the students to grasp what they're reading outweigh any desire, if there is such, to have them think spontaneously. (Where I'm from, spontaneous student thought is not usually a pretty picture.)
Read, say, Euthyphro, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Groundwork. (Why Euthyphro? I dunno. I had a professor describe the titular character as being … actually I can't remember. She described someone, possibly from Clouds, as being like an Athenian Homer Simpson, but she had some amusing description of Euthyphro as well. Anyway, as the first Platonic dialogue I read, it holds a special place in my heart.)
Identity through time: only of interest to those who have already been perverted!
I have not had good experiences with one page ungraded papers. You get a lot of 'in my opinion.'
And the biggest problem with historical papers? Throughout all of human history, mankind has worried about the... mind-body problem....
I thought about doing all dialogues, but then I worried that they'd think academic philosophy approved of dialogues, and then they'd cry and be disappointed.
B: I had the impression Philosophy types were sometimes encouraged to patronize the past, as in the way Ayer starts with a Bradley quote about the nature of the absolute and throws it out the window.
Really got "Victorian" as applying to the world before the sixties? hmm.
The trick to the one-page papers, imho, is to grade them credit/no credit. And be vague about the standards, telling them that if they appear not to have done the reading or to be thinking seriously, they won't get credit. Then you refuse credit to a few marginal papers in the first couple weeks, and they really shape up.
I'm a big fan of having these done before the class meets; whether or not the students fully "get" the material, it's useful to have them both do the reading and think about it before you expect them to come to class and discuss it. And even if you're lecturing, they won't do the reading if they expect you to "just cover it in lecture."
Can't have that thinking seriously, b. That's for our department. Tell 'em to come over when they're ready to, but until then, let them know you'll have none of that!
Assigning the work after class would feel too much like "now reproduce ze korrekt zhinking!" for me, but as you say, it's a question of style and priorities.
I prefer quizzes as reading checks. Because it seems unfair to me to grade a one-page paper when the arguments haven't yet been discussed. If it's not graded, it's a waste of my time and theirs.
I like one-page papers otherwise, though. Most philosophy articles have points that can be made in a page, anyway.
In fact Pirsig's work could really serve as the backbone of an intro to philosophy course, you could read the Phaedrus, Zen and the Art of Archery, maybe On the Road, all in the context of adolescent navel-gazing. You'd be a hit with students!
I think it's possible to take the Problems approach and pull it off, but gosh most of the versions I've seen are heavy on the downside FL identified.
One strategy is to try to take a particular problem or two and then illustrate it through a number of different texts. A good course ought to tell a story, I think. This Intro class (pdf) tried to pull that off, looking at a set of issues in moral psychology and tracing them through a bunch of (both old and new) texts. If you overdo it, your students think you're a monomaniac at the end of the semester. But the great advantage is that they get to actually see a bunch of different philosophers taking up the same problem from a bunch of different angles.
Slightly OT, but I once wrote a little rant about how to teach introduction to applied ethics. I haven't read it in a while, so I can't remember how sanctimonious and silly it was.
(Actually come to think of it, I took a class in college in which we read all four of the books cited in 25, it was an excellent class and not at all (or not excessively) navel-gazy. But it was also a literature class, not philosophy. So.)
To be a little more serious, JM, philosophers, generally speaking, do not write well. (Apologies if you already know this and I'm inadvertently talking down to you.) So reproducing, in short form, the argument or problem is quite difficult. Even with class notes, and an assignment of limited scope, this would not be a pushover assignment.
Excellent. But sadly untrue. There is a certain journal, which I will not shame by naming, that makes a big fuss about its draconian ban on the use of the first person in propria persona. Since the paper I submitted to them included as an example an actual true story that happened to me, this was a real pain. (I think I cut that part to get below the word limit anyway.)
I start with the Euthyphro, because it introduces both the character of socrates and reflective equilibrium as a philosophical method. Also students seem to like it. As a completely secular person, I found it weird at first to be talking seriously about peity, but most students have no trouble with it.
I think dialogues do still get respect in academic philosophy, at least as teaching tools (which is how Plato used them to begin with.) Hackett has a lovely series of dialogues by contemporary philosophers (inlcuding John Perry on personal identity.)
You can have it tell a story without going into great historical detail, if you do the Problems approach. Treat it as a long dialogue spanning centuries.
Epistemology/skepticism is a good topic for that. So's the God arguments.
CCP: Agreed. That's why I teach the historical/dialogues course. I couldn't teach an intro course without using books I'm totally fucking in love with.
Who's the audience for Intro? My university, if I'm remembering it right, didn't have a general intro to philosophy course for majors, but required a two semester sequence - called "history of philosophy" - covering ancient and modern. (I took modern, and it was mostly a bunch of readings from Descartes to Hume, mostly with a focus on epistemology - I think - but with a little political philosophy thrown in somewhat incongruously: "today, we'll take a break from wondering how we can ever know anything in order to attack Rousseau").
However, there were courses designed for non-majors that seemed more like a general intro to philosophy. I probably should have taken one of those.
I took a philosophy class in high school—taught by the original Modesto Kid—organized as a survey. I still remember a lot of the reading very vividly, because he often linked the philosophical problems it raised to our immediate circumstances. He was constantly using the school principal and other teachers and students (and Don/na Sha/lala) as characters in ethical dramas, &c. Not necessary for sophisticated students, perhaps, but if you're teaching first year students who are basically at the level of high school students and need some sort of hook, useful.
One last comment on this b/c I am definately not the sort of person who requires standardardized thought: I endorse "reproduce ze corekt zhinking" only so far as "zhinking" refers to the zhinking of the author, and "corekt" in this context means, "rewrite it so that the author would approve of your recapitulation." I rather think students are going to be critical and creative no matter what, and what they need, what they're not likely to do themselves, are exercises in becoming better readers.
My required intro philo course took the Problems route and the instructor (finishing his PhD that year) got a lot of flak because students challenged some of the Problems (abortion, capital punishment) as not being fundamental enough. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. My next (and only other) philo course was symbolic logic, which conveniently avoided all that ...er, philosophical stuff.
48: Oh yeah, I thought you were making that implication. I don't see JM calling for students to be taught to be critical and creative in bad ways.
Can one be creative in a bad way? The adjective seems to me to have an inherently positive connotation. Critical obviously has a couple of different meanings, the one which I understood you to be using is one with pretty positive connotations. (I.e. decisive, analytical, skillful in criticism).
I don't think students need to be taught to be creative in bad ways. This is, some might argue, their natural condition. I think JM and I simply disagree on the role of creativity in intro philosophy. (I'm not a total bore. I do think there are 2 places for limited creativity - the midterm and the final.)
Surely one can be critical and creative in bad ways. Have you never thought poorly of a piece in a museum? But it was still creative. Have you never wrinkled your nose at an essay which was, nonetheless, critical? Think of conservative pundits. They are usually both creative in critical. They are also usually just rather bad at both.
Michael, I'm not a philosophy instructor, so my endorsement of the one-page paper before the class model was rather more...um...general.
The students are free to be critical and creative in bad ways, and then I am free to reply to them that their one-page paper makes no sense.
It's just that I've found that the one-page papers assigned before class can increase the percentage of the classroom at least pretending to give a fuck.
Weiner, FL, I suppose Wolfson, anyone else who want to-
I didn't attend class (four years ago) on the days we were taught internal versus external reasons and I just read the SEP on it (section 4. in the Williams entry) and and found it dissatifying. Do any of you have things you feel like saying about the debate?
I was an intro philosophy course that used the histrorical texts approach. The students mostly didn't seem to have any prior knowledge of philosophy or be unusually bright, but it seemed to be work well.
It's not your fault. I just tried to read that Stanford section myself and immediately suffered narcolepsy. If I recall the Williams paper correctly, Williams claims that we all have a subjective motivational set S which contains the things we care about. We can be said to have reasons to do something in a familiar means-ends sense insofar as that "something" will further a motive of ours (a member of S). This reason is "internal" in the sense that it applies to us because of the consituants of our S. If our S were different, the reason would evaporate. Williams argues that this just is the only way a person can have a reason to do something. There are no "external" reasons that apply to you irrespective of what your S happens to contain. Thus, Immanuel Kant is all washed up: all we've got are hypothetical imperatives.
Rejoinders include:
1. Insofar as we are commited to the space of reasons, there seem to be certain reasons we must respect. The need to observe the principle of non-contradiction, e.g., seems like a reason that all reason-governed agents must respect. These regulative reasons are "external." Again, reaching back 5+ years, I believe Korsgaard argues this way. (although using a better case than non-contradiction)
2. Means-end reasoning is taken by Williams as a paradigmatic example of a reason. But here, we see Williams identify an end with a member of S. Why is a member of S an end? Why don't only some members of S count as ends? If I have a transitory, but very deeply felt, desire to jump whenever I am on a cliff, does this mean I have a reason to do it? Thinking Aristoteleans say no! (although Williams here might just say we are confusing 'X has reason to do Y" with "Y is good for X', and that his notion of reason is the intuitive one)
3. Gary McDowell has a paper, called "Might There Be External Reasons," which by his standards is hardly coked out at all. Nonetheless, the point of it vs. Williams escapes my memory; I do recall him making the point that merely because new reason-granting motivations don't *get into* S via reasons, that doesn't prove Williams' point. A brief google search dicloses that Phil Pettit and Michael Smith combined take 40 pages to wrestle this particular one (McDowell vs. Williams) to the ground. Over the next few days, maybe we can assemble a team of 80 philosophers superior to Michael Smith and maybe we can get it down to a couple of PowerPoint slides.
Working philosophers of unfogged, can we get some help on this?
Too early in the morning for me to think about this too hard, but we had a whimsical discussion about a related debate earlier. Which I ended by promising to address objections later, so I guess I'd better bring it eventually. (Millgram eventually argues that only instrumentalism will get Williams to his end point.)
What does Williams have in mind for a non-instrumental yet sound deliberative route? Um, let me see if I can remember. I'm pretty sure that exercising the imagination can get you to a reason even if you don't start with an antecedent motive to do whatever. Here the relevant element of your S might be what Williams calls "a pattern of evaluation." I'll have to recheck this all when it's not so early in the morning.
I'm pretty sure Williams can address baa's jumping off a cliff objection by saying that part of good deliberation is resolving contradictions in your S. You probably have all sorts of things in your S that would be hindered by jumping off a cliff. So he can say you have an internal reason, based in S, not to jump off the cliff; and I think he also has the resources to say that not everything in S will be created equal (so it's not "you have a reason to jump and a reason not to").
You're absolutely right that the "contradictions in S" is a good way to go as to why not to jump off the cliff. I seem to recall some neo-Aristotelean type simply *denying* that you had a reason to jump off a cliff simply because a brief desire swept through you. He was using it as an intuitive backing for a thesis that only some of the "sensations that are motivating us now" could be reason-giving. (it's a reason that gives an interest, not vice versa)
Gary Watson's paper, "Free Agency", says something like you're saying, baa. His main concern in that paper is compatibilism and freedom, but he argues that reasons for action, not desire, motivate us to act. (Insofar as courses of action and reasons in turn influence our desires.)
I don't know what happened it, but I wrote a comment last night thanking baa for the initial answer and correcting three errors in 52. The one not about subject-verb agreement or repeated words was not including Cala iin my initial list of philosophy-talking people.
I was just blaming the patriarchy for the omission, since sweet little girls like me can't possibly know anything about Williams. (Well, I don't, but neener!...) No problem.
"S can contain such things as dispositions of evaluation, patterns of emotional reaction, personal loyalties, and various projects" as well as desires. And when he's talking about things that go beyond means-end reasoning, he emphasizes that you haven't ended the story when you find out an action is a means to something in S; you may have to reconcile or choose between different things in S, figure out what the best way to attain something in S is (where 'best' will be controlled by other elements in S), figure out what order you'll attain elements in S, and figure out what what some element in S amounts to (e.g. if you want to have an entertaining evening, you have to figure out what would count as entertaining).
And he says deliberation can add or subtract elements to S; when you do this sort of stuff you may realize that you have reason to do something that you didn't have reason to before. (Though it's not clear to me why this should count as adding something to S, since these reasons are presumably based on your original S.) Or if you use your imagination about attaining something you may realize you don't want it after all, so it disappears from S.
About the neo-Aristotelian line in 58, that seems like a sensible thing to say; the desire doesn't even provide a prima facie reason to jump off the cliff. Williams might not accept that, but he doesn't need to say that you do have some reason to jump off the cliff.
Thanks for the cite. I've never read Watson. Any good?
Weiner,
You're a total mensch for doing that.
when he's talking about things that go beyond means-end reasoning, he emphasizes that you haven't ended the story when you find out an action is a means to something in S; you may have to reconcile or choose between different things in S, figure out what the best way to attain something in S
That seems absolutely correct. It still seems that the means-end relationship (action will further an element in S) is a necessary condition and key motivation for the "follow-on" reasoning, so it's fair to say that for Williams all reasons will be hypothetical, and in some sense instumental based on the elements of S.
I think Wolfson is right. We can drop "all" before "reasons," but then stress seems off. (this is almost a direct crib of Young MC's 'got more rhymes', by the way...)
See it if you feel like you could go for a languid, atmospheric film with a surprising dose of nihilistic violence. I feeling sort of moody and lazy when I saw it, and I ended up liking it quite a bit.
the desire doesn't even provide a prima facie reason to jump off the cliff.
Au contraire, says I. You'd be right if the desire was simply to jump off of a cliff. But, really, who has that desire? That thing you feel when peering 1000 feet down a sheer rock side isn't a desire for mechanical action! There are all sorts of desires tangled up in your stomach when you're standing there. The fall. The daring. The self-overcoming. The novelty. These are, I contend, reasons. Perhaps whether they are prima facie reasons is open to debate.
Apo, you seem to have seen a lot of movies far more obscure than the one I'm asking about, so I'd be somewhat surprised if your answer to the first question in 74, as amended by 76, isn't yes.
83: that reasoning just seems very very weird to me. I don't think someone's having seen films more obscure than specific film X makes it more likely that they will have seen X. Perhaps they like watching the obscure movies so will not be that interested in un-obscure X? Or there could be any number of other reasons they wouldn't have watched X. (I myself did not watch X, not being a particular Spike Lee fan.)
It would probably be too much work for the teacher, but it seems to me that you could switch off between pre-class-discussion and post-class-discussion papers. It seems to me that it might even be worthwhile (once or twice) to have students write a quasi-graded (check, check-minus, check plus) response paper before class and then follow up with another one after class discussion.
Weatherson is hosting a discussion, which also brings up the Survey model.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:23 PM
Personally, I think a mix works best. Its hard to thrust people into difficult texts unless you give a good intro into what exactly the author is trying to do, and that, of course, means bringing up the problem to be addressed. So I'd recommend introducing a classical philosophical question, and then walking students through a classic approach to the question. This gives the students a perspective from which to approach the text, which will hopefully help them out in reading it. I don't want other people to be like me, fuming at Descartes upon the first read, thinking, "What the hell is the point? He sounds like he's stoned. I miss Plato."
I'd also recommend short (1 page) exegesis papers, in which students were told to recapitulate key portions of the text, whether an argument or defining a problem. Since it's intro, I'd recommend these papers be assigned after the class in which the key portion was discussed. Repitition is the....you know. (Also, then your tests can be drawn from the weekly papers, cutting down on student confusion.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:27 PM
Aren't those basically the two approaches available for designing any syllabus?
The other downside for the historical approach, potentially, is that you have to address somehow those historical problems of context, culture, continuity... not that undergraduates won't make wierd historical claims in their papers whatever you do.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:27 PM
I teach the historical version, with the twist that all of the historical texts I use are dialogues, and the students at the end of the course have to write their own philosophical dialogue. A typical example of my syllabus is here.
I'm actually inordinately fond of my own intro course. I love the books, and the use of dialogues gives me a lot of chances to talk about the nature of philosophy.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:29 PM
Since it's intro, I'd recommend these papers be assigned after the class in which the key portion was discussed.
However, assigning the paper before the class can get the students thinking more spontaneously, get them engaged with the problems. (This works a lot better if the exercises are ungraded.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:30 PM
The solution is to have a year-long course or set of courses.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:32 PM
Do philosophy students think that everything before 1960 was "the Victorian period"?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:32 PM
Eurgh. I still remember with a certain amount of peevishness losing credit on a high school social studies examination for failing to identify the historical period that came to an end with the beginning of WW I in 1914 as the 'Victorian period'. My protests that she'd been dead for over a decade at that point cut no ice.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:36 PM
To each his own, but, for intro, I really believe that the benefits of getting the students to grasp what they're reading outweigh any desire, if there is such, to have them think spontaneously. (Where I'm from, spontaneous student thought is not usually a pretty picture.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:37 PM
Read, say, Euthyphro, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Groundwork. (Why Euthyphro? I dunno. I had a professor describe the titular character as being … actually I can't remember. She described someone, possibly from Clouds, as being like an Athenian Homer Simpson, but she had some amusing description of Euthyphro as well. Anyway, as the first Platonic dialogue I read, it holds a special place in my heart.)
Identity through time: only of interest to those who have already been perverted!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:37 PM
I have not had good experiences with one page ungraded papers. You get a lot of 'in my opinion.'
And the biggest problem with historical papers? Throughout all of human history, mankind has worried about the... mind-body problem....
I thought about doing all dialogues, but then I worried that they'd think academic philosophy approved of dialogues, and then they'd cry and be disappointed.
Thanks so much for this post!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:38 PM
The What period? I don't remember any philosopher named Victoria.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:38 PM
LB, did the teacher not acknowledge the existence of the Edwardian?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:39 PM
You get a lot of 'in my opinion.'
10 points off for that! It's a 1-page exigetical! No room for opinion or criticism!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:40 PM
My First Dialogue® was the Symposium.
And students love love love personal identity. It's t3h pwn.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:41 PM
An Intro syllabus which does not include Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is not going to make it.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:41 PM
B: I had the impression Philosophy types were sometimes encouraged to patronize the past, as in the way Ayer starts with a Bradley quote about the nature of the absolute and throws it out the window.
Really got "Victorian" as applying to the world before the sixties? hmm.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:41 PM
Downside: can send the message that philosophy is like brain teasers for adults.
It isn't? (Semi-serious question.)
Posted by Barbar | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:42 PM
oh, snap, you were referring to "ungraded papers." Was that to me? I don't believe in ungraded papers.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:42 PM
The trick to the one-page papers, imho, is to grade them credit/no credit. And be vague about the standards, telling them that if they appear not to have done the reading or to be thinking seriously, they won't get credit. Then you refuse credit to a few marginal papers in the first couple weeks, and they really shape up.
I'm a big fan of having these done before the class meets; whether or not the students fully "get" the material, it's useful to have them both do the reading and think about it before you expect them to come to class and discuss it. And even if you're lecturing, they won't do the reading if they expect you to "just cover it in lecture."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:43 PM
Can't have that thinking seriously, b. That's for our department. Tell 'em to come over when they're ready to, but until then, let them know you'll have none of that!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:45 PM
those historical problems of context, culture, continuity. It's a philosophy syllabus, JM. Please.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:45 PM
Assigning the work after class would feel too much like "now reproduce ze korrekt zhinking!" for me, but as you say, it's a question of style and priorities.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:47 PM
I prefer quizzes as reading checks. Because it seems unfair to me to grade a one-page paper when the arguments haven't yet been discussed. If it's not graded, it's a waste of my time and theirs.
I like one-page papers otherwise, though. Most philosophy articles have points that can be made in a page, anyway.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:48 PM
In fact Pirsig's work could really serve as the backbone of an intro to philosophy course, you could read the Phaedrus, Zen and the Art of Archery, maybe On the Road, all in the context of adolescent navel-gazing. You'd be a hit with students!
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:48 PM
I have not had good experiences with one page ungraded papers. You get a lot of 'in my opinion.'
Does "ungraded" mean you can't respond with a sharp blow from the Calabat?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:48 PM
I think it's possible to take the Problems approach and pull it off, but gosh most of the versions I've seen are heavy on the downside FL identified.
One strategy is to try to take a particular problem or two and then illustrate it through a number of different texts. A good course ought to tell a story, I think. This Intro class (pdf) tried to pull that off, looking at a set of issues in moral psychology and tracing them through a bunch of (both old and new) texts. If you overdo it, your students think you're a monomaniac at the end of the semester. But the great advantage is that they get to actually see a bunch of different philosophers taking up the same problem from a bunch of different angles.
Slightly OT, but I once wrote a little rant about how to teach introduction to applied ethics. I haven't read it in a while, so I can't remember how sanctimonious and silly it was.
Posted by Chris | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:50 PM
Assigning the work after class would feel too much like "now reproduce ze korrekt zhinking!"
yes, yes, yes! If only they could!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:50 PM
(Actually come to think of it, I took a class in college in which we read all four of the books cited in 25, it was an excellent class and not at all (or not excessively) navel-gazy. But it was also a literature class, not philosophy. So.)
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:53 PM
No calabat, but I did ban the first person from one-page assignments once. ("You can have it back when you are older.")
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:54 PM
FL, but if we take Chris's point that a "good course ought to tell a story," don't we get into problems of history?
Unless philosophy courses are all reducible to symbolic logic, which not being in the field, they might be for all I know.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:54 PM
13: Not in the context of historical periods she didn't.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:54 PM
To be a little more serious, JM, philosophers, generally speaking, do not write well. (Apologies if you already know this and I'm inadvertently talking down to you.) So reproducing, in short form, the argument or problem is quite difficult. Even with class notes, and an assignment of limited scope, this would not be a pushover assignment.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:55 PM
"You can have it back when you are older."
Excellent. But sadly untrue. There is a certain journal, which I will not shame by naming, that makes a big fuss about its draconian ban on the use of the first person in propria persona. Since the paper I submitted to them included as an example an actual true story that happened to me, this was a real pain. (I think I cut that part to get below the word limit anyway.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:56 PM
I start with the Euthyphro, because it introduces both the character of socrates and reflective equilibrium as a philosophical method. Also students seem to like it. As a completely secular person, I found it weird at first to be talking seriously about peity, but most students have no trouble with it.
I think dialogues do still get respect in academic philosophy, at least as teaching tools (which is how Plato used them to begin with.) Hackett has a lovely series of dialogues by contemporary philosophers (inlcuding John Perry on personal identity.)
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:57 PM
You can have it tell a story without going into great historical detail, if you do the Problems approach. Treat it as a long dialogue spanning centuries.
Epistemology/skepticism is a good topic for that. So's the God arguments.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 12:57 PM
Whatever track you take, I'd recommend favouring materials and problems you feel strongly about. Feelings are contagious.
Posted by Central Content publisher | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:02 PM
CCP: Agreed. That's why I teach the historical/dialogues course. I couldn't teach an intro course without using books I'm totally fucking in love with.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:05 PM
Who's the audience for Intro? My university, if I'm remembering it right, didn't have a general intro to philosophy course for majors, but required a two semester sequence - called "history of philosophy" - covering ancient and modern. (I took modern, and it was mostly a bunch of readings from Descartes to Hume, mostly with a focus on epistemology - I think - but with a little political philosophy thrown in somewhat incongruously: "today, we'll take a break from wondering how we can ever know anything in order to attack Rousseau").
However, there were courses designed for non-majors that seemed more like a general intro to philosophy. I probably should have taken one of those.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:19 PM
I took a philosophy class in high school—taught by the original Modesto Kid—organized as a survey. I still remember a lot of the reading very vividly, because he often linked the philosophical problems it raised to our immediate circumstances. He was constantly using the school principal and other teachers and students (and Don/na Sha/lala) as characters in ethical dramas, &c. Not necessary for sophisticated students, perhaps, but if you're teaching first year students who are basically at the level of high school students and need some sort of hook, useful.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:27 PM
One last comment on this b/c I am definately not the sort of person who requires standardardized thought: I endorse "reproduce ze corekt zhinking" only so far as "zhinking" refers to the zhinking of the author, and "corekt" in this context means, "rewrite it so that the author would approve of your recapitulation." I rather think students are going to be critical and creative no matter what, and what they need, what they're not likely to do themselves, are exercises in becoming better readers.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:27 PM
My required intro philo course took the Problems route and the instructor (finishing his PhD that year) got a lot of flak because students challenged some of the Problems (abortion, capital punishment) as not being fundamental enough. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. My next (and only other) philo course was symbolic logic, which conveniently avoided all that ...er, philosophical stuff.
Posted by bill | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:28 PM
Not necessary for sophisticated students, perhaps,
Half the hypothetical cases in my senior phil of law class involved bestiality. We're a sophistcated bunch.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:30 PM
Donna S. often played a sinister, evil-mastermind role in these scenarios.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:32 PM
I rather think students are going to be critical and creative no matter what
On what evidence do you base this? I look around me every day and see people who are neither.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:32 PM
(Indeed I myself am either of those things only occasionally, and both rarely.)
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:35 PM
Identity through time: only of interest to those who have already been perverted!
Are you kidding? This has interested me since forever.
Oh.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:39 PM
Really? Maybe you're implictly adding on "in a good way."
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:44 PM
48: Oh yeah, I thought you were making that implication. I don't see JM calling for students to be taught to be critical and creative in bad ways.
Can one be creative in a bad way? The adjective seems to me to have an inherently positive connotation. Critical obviously has a couple of different meanings, the one which I understood you to be using is one with pretty positive connotations. (I.e. decisive, analytical, skillful in criticism).
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 1:52 PM
I don't think students need to be taught to be creative in bad ways. This is, some might argue, their natural condition. I think JM and I simply disagree on the role of creativity in intro philosophy. (I'm not a total bore. I do think there are 2 places for limited creativity - the midterm and the final.)
Surely one can be critical and creative in bad ways. Have you never thought poorly of a piece in a museum? But it was still creative. Have you never wrinkled your nose at an essay which was, nonetheless, critical? Think of conservative pundits. They are usually both creative in critical. They are also usually just rather bad at both.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 2:02 PM
Michael, I'm not a philosophy instructor, so my endorsement of the one-page paper before the class model was rather more...um...general.
The students are free to be critical and creative in bad ways, and then I am free to reply to them that their one-page paper makes no sense.
It's just that I've found that the one-page papers assigned before class can increase the percentage of the classroom at least pretending to give a fuck.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 2:29 PM
Weiner, FL, I suppose Wolfson, anyone else who want to-
I didn't attend class (four years ago) on the days we were taught internal versus external reasons and I just read the SEP on it (section 4. in the Williams entry) and and found it dissatifying. Do any of you have things you feel like saying about the debate?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 5:21 PM
I was an intro philosophy course that used the histrorical texts approach. The students mostly didn't seem to have any prior knowledge of philosophy or be unusually bright, but it seemed to be work well.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 5:48 PM
Washer:
It's not your fault. I just tried to read that Stanford section myself and immediately suffered narcolepsy. If I recall the Williams paper correctly, Williams claims that we all have a subjective motivational set S which contains the things we care about. We can be said to have reasons to do something in a familiar means-ends sense insofar as that "something" will further a motive of ours (a member of S). This reason is "internal" in the sense that it applies to us because of the consituants of our S. If our S were different, the reason would evaporate. Williams argues that this just is the only way a person can have a reason to do something. There are no "external" reasons that apply to you irrespective of what your S happens to contain. Thus, Immanuel Kant is all washed up: all we've got are hypothetical imperatives.
Rejoinders include:
1. Insofar as we are commited to the space of reasons, there seem to be certain reasons we must respect. The need to observe the principle of non-contradiction, e.g., seems like a reason that all reason-governed agents must respect. These regulative reasons are "external." Again, reaching back 5+ years, I believe Korsgaard argues this way. (although using a better case than non-contradiction)
2. Means-end reasoning is taken by Williams as a paradigmatic example of a reason. But here, we see Williams identify an end with a member of S. Why is a member of S an end? Why don't only some members of S count as ends? If I have a transitory, but very deeply felt, desire to jump whenever I am on a cliff, does this mean I have a reason to do it? Thinking Aristoteleans say no! (although Williams here might just say we are confusing 'X has reason to do Y" with "Y is good for X', and that his notion of reason is the intuitive one)
3. Gary McDowell has a paper, called "Might There Be External Reasons," which by his standards is hardly coked out at all. Nonetheless, the point of it vs. Williams escapes my memory; I do recall him making the point that merely because new reason-granting motivations don't *get into* S via reasons, that doesn't prove Williams' point. A brief google search dicloses that Phil Pettit and Michael Smith combined take 40 pages to wrestle this particular one (McDowell vs. Williams) to the ground. Over the next few days, maybe we can assemble a team of 80 philosophers superior to Michael Smith and maybe we can get it down to a couple of PowerPoint slides.
Working philosophers of unfogged, can we get some help on this?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-19-06 10:10 PM
1. Williams denies quite emphatically that only correct instrumental means-end reasoning can provide sound deliberative routes.
2. John McDowell, not Gary.
Posted by yeti | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 1:36 AM
Hah! That's right. Gary McDowell is a the legal Mcdowell! I stand by my depiction of "Might There Be External Reasons" as "hardly coked out at all."
Yeti, can you remind me what Williams has in mind for a non-instrumental yet sound deliberative route?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 6:28 AM
Too early in the morning for me to think about this too hard, but we had a whimsical discussion about a related debate earlier. Which I ended by promising to address objections later, so I guess I'd better bring it eventually. (Millgram eventually argues that only instrumentalism will get Williams to his end point.)
What does Williams have in mind for a non-instrumental yet sound deliberative route? Um, let me see if I can remember. I'm pretty sure that exercising the imagination can get you to a reason even if you don't start with an antecedent motive to do whatever. Here the relevant element of your S might be what Williams calls "a pattern of evaluation." I'll have to recheck this all when it's not so early in the morning.
I'm pretty sure Williams can address baa's jumping off a cliff objection by saying that part of good deliberation is resolving contradictions in your S. You probably have all sorts of things in your S that would be hindered by jumping off a cliff. So he can say you have an internal reason, based in S, not to jump off the cliff; and I think he also has the resources to say that not everything in S will be created equal (so it's not "you have a reason to jump and a reason not to").
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 7:03 AM
Thanks Matt,
You're absolutely right that the "contradictions in S" is a good way to go as to why not to jump off the cliff. I seem to recall some neo-Aristotelean type simply *denying* that you had a reason to jump off a cliff simply because a brief desire swept through you. He was using it as an intuitive backing for a thesis that only some of the "sensations that are motivating us now" could be reason-giving. (it's a reason that gives an interest, not vice versa)
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 7:08 AM
Gary Watson's paper, "Free Agency", says something like you're saying, baa. His main concern in that paper is compatibilism and freedom, but he argues that reasons for action, not desire, motivate us to act. (Insofar as courses of action and reasons in turn influence our desires.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 8:27 AM
I don't know what happened it, but I wrote a comment last night thanking baa for the initial answer and correcting three errors in 52. The one not about subject-verb agreement or repeated words was not including Cala iin my initial list of philosophy-talking people.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 8:57 AM
"what happened it" s/b "what happened to it"
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 8:58 AM
I was just blaming the patriarchy for the omission, since sweet little girls like me can't possibly know anything about Williams. (Well, I don't, but neener!...) No problem.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 9:01 AM
Having been reunited with my copy of Moral Luck:
"S can contain such things as dispositions of evaluation, patterns of emotional reaction, personal loyalties, and various projects" as well as desires. And when he's talking about things that go beyond means-end reasoning, he emphasizes that you haven't ended the story when you find out an action is a means to something in S; you may have to reconcile or choose between different things in S, figure out what the best way to attain something in S is (where 'best' will be controlled by other elements in S), figure out what order you'll attain elements in S, and figure out what what some element in S amounts to (e.g. if you want to have an entertaining evening, you have to figure out what would count as entertaining).
And he says deliberation can add or subtract elements to S; when you do this sort of stuff you may realize that you have reason to do something that you didn't have reason to before. (Though it's not clear to me why this should count as adding something to S, since these reasons are presumably based on your original S.) Or if you use your imagination about attaining something you may realize you don't want it after all, so it disappears from S.
About the neo-Aristotelian line in 58, that seems like a sensible thing to say; the desire doesn't even provide a prima facie reason to jump off the cliff. Williams might not accept that, but he doesn't need to say that you do have some reason to jump off the cliff.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 9:12 AM
Cala,
Thanks for the cite. I've never read Watson. Any good?
Weiner,
You're a total mensch for doing that.
when he's talking about things that go beyond means-end reasoning, he emphasizes that you haven't ended the story when you find out an action is a means to something in S; you may have to reconcile or choose between different things in S, figure out what the best way to attain something in S
That seems absolutely correct. It still seems that the means-end relationship (action will further an element in S) is a necessary condition and key motivation for the "follow-on" reasoning, so it's fair to say that for Williams all reasons will be hypothetical, and in some sense instumental based on the elements of S.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 9:35 AM
baa, it's not bad, but works best when read as a response to Frankfurt's concept of a person stuff.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 9:37 AM
Thanks, baa! That seems like a fair summary (to me, not an expert), and I think "all reasoning will be hypothetical" is definitely true for Williams.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 9:38 AM
Can we get a get a Williams rap going:
I'm buds with Quentin Skinner 'cause I'm such an intellectual/
I cheated with his wife 'cause all reasons are hypothetical
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 10:02 AM
Second line is too long.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 10:06 AM
Not if you pronounce "reasons" in a nonstandard wy, with stress on the second syllable.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 10:15 AM
I think Wolfson is right. We can drop "all" before "reasons," but then stress seems off. (this is almost a direct crib of Young MC's 'got more rhymes', by the way...)
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 10:50 AM
"I cheated with his wife; my reason's hypothetical."
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 11:04 AM
Better!
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 11:20 AM
I am not taking part in this, any friends of Williams' who might be reading.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 12:07 PM
The thread on top political philosophy articles over at CT probably won't help you form an intro syllabus.
More OT than usual: Has anyone seen Bring Me The of Alfredo Garcia? If so, do you think I should see it tonight?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 12:15 PM
74:
Probably a typo, but wonderfully conceptual if not.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 12:21 PM
Yeah, the missing word is "head."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 12:25 PM
That CT thread ... ye gods! The equality of what and G.A. Cohen. Do they *want* people to hate political philosophy?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 12:28 PM
See it if you feel like you could go for a languid, atmospheric film with a surprising dose of nihilistic violence. I feeling sort of moody and lazy when I saw it, and I ended up liking it quite a bit.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 12:29 PM
I *was* feeling...
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 12:30 PM
the desire doesn't even provide a prima facie reason to jump off the cliff.
Au contraire, says I. You'd be right if the desire was simply to jump off of a cliff. But, really, who has that desire? That thing you feel when peering 1000 feet down a sheer rock side isn't a desire for mechanical action! There are all sorts of desires tangled up in your stomach when you're standing there. The fall. The daring. The self-overcoming. The novelty. These are, I contend, reasons. Perhaps whether they are prima facie reasons is open to debate.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 1:52 PM
a prima facie reason to jump off the cliff
Watch this!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 2:11 PM
Watch this!
Sadly, no video is provided.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 2:13 PM
Apo, you seem to have seen a lot of movies far more obscure than the one I'm asking about, so I'd be somewhat surprised if your answer to the first question in 74, as amended by 76, isn't yes.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 2:15 PM
If you like Peckinpah, that's the one to watch.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 2:24 PM
83: that reasoning just seems very very weird to me. I don't think someone's having seen films more obscure than specific film X makes it more likely that they will have seen X. Perhaps they like watching the obscure movies so will not be that interested in un-obscure X? Or there could be any number of other reasons they wouldn't have watched X. (I myself did not watch X, not being a particular Spike Lee fan.)
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 2:24 PM
Awesome story, Apo. 150 feet? Holy bananas. And still alive! Better luck to him, next time.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 2:50 PM
It would probably be too much work for the teacher, but it seems to me that you could switch off between pre-class-discussion and post-class-discussion papers. It seems to me that it might even be worthwhile (once or twice) to have students write a quasi-graded (check, check-minus, check plus) response paper before class and then follow up with another one after class discussion.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 4:55 PM
To keep everyone updated on my film-viewing choices, rather than going to see BMTHOAG I'm staying home and watching The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Posted by Arch Stanton | Link to this comment | 04-20-06 5:55 PM