APA Newsletters
Spring 2000
Volume 99, Number 2

In this Spring 2000 edition of the APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy, we offer three articles of interest to teachers of philosophy.

The first article, "Why Teach Plato et al.," by William Evans, discusses a rationale for teaching "classic" philosophical authors such as Plato to students who will go no further in philosophy than an introductory course, and who will presumably forget the specific doctrines and arguments set forth in those works. The author suggests that we direct our efforts to what he calls the "intellectual virtues" apparent in those texts, such as the willingness to doubt and be critical of unexamined doctrines, and the disposition to think and react critically to discourse. He identifies certain "models of doubt," and shows how these models can be put to use in the classroom. This approach to teaching philosophy, Professor Evans argues, goes beyond using classic texts to teach content and critical reasoning; it is intended to uplift students morally by demonstrating in class the process of clear analysis and the commitment to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.

The second paper, "Teaching the Veil of Ignorance," is by Deborah K. Heikes. It offers to teachers of Rawls an in-class exercise designed to help students understand the force and the point of John Rawls’s celebrated thought-experiment. Professor Heikes has her students draw sketches of diverse individuals, distinguished according to wealth, sex, work, ethinic identity, and other such social characteristics. Students are each assigned one of these identities, without knowing what it is in their own cases, and are set in groups to construct models of social justice. When their models are complete, the veil of ignorance is lifted, and students reflect upon what their well-being may be in the social arrangements they have just constructed, given the social status and role they will have in it.

The third and final paper, "Syllogisms, Missing Premises, and Visual Reasoning," by Daniel E. Flage, provides to teachers of logic, who use Venn diagrams to analyze the structure of syllogisms and to decide their validity or invalidity, a technique for finding missing premises or a missing conclusion in enthymematic syllogisms. Professor Flage makes the interesting conjecture that some students are more "visual" in their learning strategies than others, and are able to "see" relationships in space better than they are able to see conceptual relationships. His technique provides a means of "visual reasoning" that allows such students to discover the logical structure of a missing premise or a conclusion in a syllogism by constructing Venn diagrams. His solution to this problem of visualizing relationships is quite elegant, and all logic students should enjoy the process of discovery it offers.

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 books and materials we have for review are listed in the Books and Other Materials Received section 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. The following guidelines for submissions should be followed:

Contributions should be sent to: