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APA Committee
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| Topic: | Useful Case Study for Philosophy 101 |
| Name: | David Boersema |
| Institution: | Pacific University |
| E-mail: | boersema@pacificu.edu |
| Date Submitted: | 9/10/2000 |
For several years, in my Philosophy 101 course, I have used the book GENIE, by Russ Rymer (NY: Harper, 1993) as a fruitful and stimulating non-fictional case study for students to use in connection with issues about epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory. The book is an account of a young girl in the Los Angeles area who was discovered in 1970 at the age of thirteen to have been kept in isolation and physically abused. When found she weighed only 59 pounds and, having been kept in isolation and beaten when she vocalized, had a comprehension vocabulary of fewer than 20 words. The story broke in the LA Times on November 17, 1970 (teachers can, of course, access this via the newspapers archives). The book is written by a journalist and is certainly accessible to first-year students. It is 220 pages. The book not only details what happened after Genie was discovered, but raises and discusses various linguistic and philosophical aspects of this case. (I found this book while browsing in the linguistics section of a local book store.) It directly raises issues about empiricism vs rationalism, especially with respect to language acquisition. It discusses, albeit summarily, Locke, Descartes, and Chomsky. In addition, it raises issues of free will (how free and in what senses of "freedom" was Genie free to act?), mind-body issues (particularly issues of brain development), issues of self-awareness (so, points about the self as well as about consciousness), issues about the relation of thought and language, issues about the sociality of the self. There are also issues of moral and legal responsibility (her mother did not act to help Genie; how is non-action to be understood). There are questions raised about the appropriate role of the state, especially in light of the fact that when Genie was found, her linguistic abilities (or inabilities) provided linguists with a "Wild-boy of Avignon" case study, and they appeared to take advantage of this situation (was it at Genie's expense?). It is a heart-wrenching story. While I have used this book in conjunction with a number of standard intro. to philosophy books (both anthologies and self-contained monographs), a new book has recently come out that is particularly well-suited to work with this. It is KNOWLEDGE AND MIND by Andrew Brook and Robert J. Stainton (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). It contains very readable, yet substantive, chapters on knowledge of the external world, knowledge of language, the metaphysics of mind, free choice, and others.
GENIE grabs students because it is a real-life story, and it is moving. It has made many of my students see the actual applications of what they might otherwise see as abstract philosophical topics that they don't connect with. I strongly recommend it, especially at the intro. level.