From The Editors
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Tziporah Kasachkoff & Eugene Kelly
Co-Editors
In this Fall 1999 edition of the APA Newsletter on Teaching
Philosophy, we offer four articles of interest to teachers of philosophy.
The first article, "Is Advocacy of Specific Philosophical
Positions in the Classroom Pedagogically Acceptable?" was written by Josef Seifert,
Rector of the International Academy for Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein.
Professor Seifert's argument rests on four central points: 1) that the difference between
scientific and philosophical knowledge is not so broad as to require that advocacy in
philosophy comes under a different moral category than advocacy in science; 2) that the
view prohibiting teachers of philosophy from advocacy of any principles in class tacitly
assumes the correctness of epistemological skepticism and relativism, which, however, are
fundamentally incoherent positions; 3) that the goal of teaching in any field should not
be the mere advocacy, but the analysis and justification of those positions the instructor
believes to be sound; 4) that we must recognize the pedagogical and edifying value of
having students observe and join with the instructor in the philosophical struggle for
truth. The author then cautiously qualifies his position by analyzing modes of teaching,
the attitudes of students and instructors, the scope of the material, and the political
situation of the times, and by emphasizing the necessity of fairness in presenting the
theories of thinkers with whom the instructor disagrees.
Our second article, by William L. Reese of SUNY-Albany, outlines
his course in intensive writing and philosophy, where students make extensive use of his Dictionary
of Religion and Philosophy. He begins by referring to the fruitful exchange
concerning the Dictionary that he had in three previous editions of the Newsletter
with Professor Jerome Gellman. His objective in this paper, however, is a description of
the aims, methods, and content of his course. He outlines the nine problems that are the
focus of instruction, and describes the resources available to his students as they
prepare a paper on each of the nine topics. The entries in the Dictionary that
are relevant to each topic as a resource are listed, and we are told of the Web site
resources, the grade requirements, and what the author calls an introductory
"information burst" that leads into each topic. Finally, Professor Reese offers
us a detailed treatment of how the allotted class time is used for two of his topics, the
significance of Socrates' life and teaching, and the concept of human freedom. The paper
concludes with a summary of the materials available to the students on the course Web site
concerning the second topic.
The third article, "An Introductory Exercise In Articulating
Values," by Jason Kawall of Brown University, presents students with a fanciful
situation in which they are on a large ship sinking at sea, and have to decide upon their
priorities as they attempt to save from drowning a variety of living things aboard the
ship. The lifeboat can hold just so many things, and hence students must decide which
living beings to put in the lifeboat first and which last, assuming that all will not be
able to fit. The immediate purpose of the exercise is to help students decide and justify,
in class discussions, what their priorities would be, and hence what the structure of
their values is. Among relevant values suggested by the instructor for consideration by
the students as they make their decisions are sentience, humanity, general utility, and
environmental viability. The more general goals of the exercise include fostering such
values as student self-understanding, understanding the values of their fellows, greater
analytical acumen, and, perhaps most importantly, opening students' minds to deeper
reflections on the nature of the values they appear to take for granted in their
discussion. The author concludes his paper by suggesting ways in which the exercise could
be extended to an examination of value-priorities in matters such as human well-being.
The fourth and final article, "Coping with the Consumer
Mentality When Teaching Introductory Philosophy," was written by Andrew Kelley of
Bradley University. It concerns the techniques for dealing with an attitude Kelley thinks
prevalent among students that impedes his efforts to communicate the unique and central
values of the study of philosophy. This attitude he calls the "consumer
mentality," and defines as "the attitude whereby students view their classes and
their education solely in terms of a product that they are purchasing or a service that
they are being rendered." The paper then develops eight techniques for successfully
overcoming that attitude and making an encounter with genuine philosophical issues
possible for his initially skeptical students.
The editors have recently received an unusual package of teaching
materials, and we would like to encourage our readers to review them for the Newsletter.
Robert E. Horn is the director of a project, published by MacroVU Press, that attempts to
outline in the manner of a flowchart some salient issues in the philosophy of mind that
appeal to undergraduates. Our office received one specimen of these "Argumentation
Maps," each measuring approximately 3' by 4', that outline seven issues concerning
the general question of whether computers can think. The first map, for example, makes
visible the history of the debate. It begins with some statements on artificial
intelligence by Alan Turing, and arrows direct the reader to the responses and
counterresponses to issues related to those statements by later inquirers. Each position
on the map is provided with a bibliographical reference, and a complete bibliography of
works cited is included in the handbook provided with the maps, and many positions contain
useful graphics. The project as a whole was discussed in an article by Joseph Chandler in
the summer 1999 edition of Philosophers' Magazine.
This is a project that should appeal to readers concerned with the
philosophy of mind or with artificial intelligence. The volunteer reviewer will be
provided with the maps, the handbook, and a selection of fact sheets that were provided by
the publisher. Reviewers should, as always in the APA Newsletter on Teaching
Philosophy, emphasize the pedagogical value of the material.
We always encourage our readers to suggest themselves as reviewers
of books and other material that they think may be especially good for classroom use. The
names of the other books and materials we have received for review are listed in section V
of the Newsletter. Please remember again that our publication is devoted to
pedagogy and not to theoretical discussions of philosophical issues, and that should also
be borne in mind when reviewing material for our publication.
And as always, we encourage our readers to write for our
publication. We welcome papers that respond, comment on or take issue with any of the
material that appears within our pages. The issues raised by Professor Seifert about
advocacy in the classroom are especially relevant to discussions on pedagogy, and have
generated considerable controversy among teachers of philosophy, although relatively
little about them has appeared in print in recent years. We hope that some of our readers
will choose to respond to Professor Seifert.
The following guidelines for submissions should be followed:
- The author's name, the title of the paper, and full mailing address
should appear on a separate sheet of paper. Nothing that identifies the author or his or
her institution should appear within the body or within the footnotes/endnotes of the
paper. The title of the paper should appear on the top of the paper itself.
- Four complete copies of the paper should be sent.
- Authors should adhere to the production guidelines that are
available from the APA and that are published in the present edition of the APA
Newsletters on the back inside cover.
- All material submitted to the Newsletter should be
available on Windows-readable computer disk, but don't send the disk with the submitted
paper. The editors will request the disk when the paper is ready to be published. In
writing your paper to disk, please do not use your word processor's footnote or endnote
function; all notes should be added manually at the end of the paper.
- All articles submitted to the Newsletter are
blind-reviewed by the members of the editorial committee. They are:
Tziporah Kasachkoff, Coeditor
Graduate Center, CUNY
tkasachkoff@gc.cuny.edu
Eugene Kelly, Coeditor
New York Institute of Technology
ekelly@iris.nyit.edu
David B. Martens
Mount Royal College
dmartens@mtroyal.ab.ca
Neil Rossman
La Guardia Community College, CUNY
(recently retired)
Andrew Wengraf
Brooklyn College, CUNY
(recently retired)
Contributions should be sent to:
Tziporah Kasachkoff
Philosophy Department
Graduate Center, CUNY
33 West 42nd Street
New York City, NY 10036
or to
Eugene Kelly
Department of Social Science
New York Institute of Technology
Old Westbury, NY 11568
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