Friday, November 30, 2007

The Meaning of Life

I can't remember the exact quote but Iris Murdoch says something rather like this: any philosophical theory that you can't live isn't worth reading. Whatever the exact words; I heartily endorse the idea.

Contemporary philosophy, particularly the Analytic Philosophy in which I am trained, has become remote from life. It has become a series of intellectual puzzles to challenge refined intellectual tastes. It was not always so. In ancient times, particularly in the Hellenistic period, philosophy was viewed as medicine for the soul. It was the use of argument and reasoning deployed for the express purpose of curing the suffering of human life.

My question to my fellow Quaker philosophers is this: to what extent do you, in your teaching or your research, seek to address the problem of how to live. Do you see this as a proper part of philosophy or as something arrogant or juvenile (or both)?

This semester I added a few lectures on Hellenistic philosophy to my Introduction to Philosophy lectures and found that students related quite well to the issue of how we should live. Have any of you had similar experiences?

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

A Bigger Role for Philosophy in the Curriculum

Philosophy used to have a very big role in the college curriculum. The role has grown progressively smaller with each decade. I think we have been outmanoevered by other fields (mainly by the social sciences) in the game of academic politics. We should have a big role to play. How can we get it back?

In the standard American college curriculum today the English Department gets every student for at least one and usually for two required courses in composition. This means big English Departments. People in general recognize that the thinking skills of college students are poor. So a demand for critical thinking has arisen. But Philosophy has been outmaneovered here. As philosophers we understand clearly that good thinking requires a grounding in logic. You don't have to be able to do proofs in predicate logic with overlapping quantifiers, but if you don't see the difference between modus ponens and affirming the consequent you are in bad shape. Most college students are in bad shape. A simple practical applied logic course would do them a world of good. But instead on our campus we have every department claiming that they teach critical thinking already. The art department claims that they teach students to "think critically" when they teach them how to critique a work of art. Well, as valuable as that skill is, it isn't going to help people to see the fallacies in political speeches and editorials. You need a good solid grounding in logic for that and there is no substitute for it.

We ought to push our institutions to make Critical Thinking a required course for all students and the course should be 100% under the control of people with solid training in logic. This will require a huge shift of resources on campus and this amount of change is not easily accomodated by colleges. It's easier to "solve" the problem of lack of critical thinking skills by redefinition. "Critical Thinking" becomes whatever the Art School, Communications Department, Business SChool etc. want to call by that term. In other words change nothing in fact but rename what we are already doing. Real change requires a shift of resources. A whole army of new philosophers must be hired specifically to teach these courses and that means a gradual shift of resources away from other departments. But the shift does not have to be done overnight. It could most smoothly be accomplished in phases over a ten year period. Right now our Sociology Department mandates PHIL 1180 for its majors as their way of satisfying the humanity general education requirement. A gradual plan could target different years in which different departments made a equivalent shift in their graduation requirements. As the demand for Critical Thinking courses grew new philosophy positions could be added incrementally to handle the demand.

What do you think of my utopian vision?

Friday, November 2, 2007

Plain Speech in Action

I promised to be more regular in posting on this site. Here is a copy of the email I sent to our Provost after her visit with the philosophy department this week.


Dear Dr. Sheer,

Thank you for visiting us to share views about where ECU is going. I thought I’d take a few minutes to try to restate what some of us see as the problem with plans to turn ECU into a high-powered research institution. I speak only for myself and not for Umit and Rodney, though in some ways what I will be saying echoes their thoughts.

The quality of our students is quite a bit lower than that of students at most high-powered research institutions. As our discussion revealed there is no realistic prospect of raising ECU’s admissions standards to anything like Chapel Hill levels. In fact, as you point out, it will be a challenge not to lower them. So the kinds of students we have now are the kinds of students we will have for the next ten years and any rational plan must recognize that as a fact.

Being a high-powered research institution means asking faculty to spend more time doing research and less time teaching. No one should ignore the fact that more time for research means less time for teaching. The question is: is it wise or appropriate to continue to transfer faculty time and effort away from teaching? In high-powered research institutions typically a large proportion of the teaching is turned over to graduate students in order to free up the regular faculty for research. Another way faculty resources are freed up for research is by building and filling large lecture halls so that more students can be taught with less investment of faculty time. This standard operating procedure works tolerably well under two conditions: 1) the undergraduates are reasonably good students and can learn independently with little help from the faculty, 2) the graduate students doing the face-to-face teaching are of high quality.

Unfortunately at ECU neither of these conditions obtains. Our undergraduates are not independent learners and the students admitted to our graduate programs are of marginal quality as well. To move to the high-powered research institution model is, in my opinion, irresponsible. The result will be, and to some extent already is, educationally disastrous. There is plenty of talk among faculty about how those who once regularly assigned papers are now moving to multiple choice tests. Larger classes means that fewer faculty have attendance policies. The decline in educational quality is largely invisible but it is real and it is the result of administrative policies that promote research over teaching. I hope you will seriously consider resisting the drive to turn ECU into a research institution.

Thanks again for your time and attention,


Richard Miller
Associate ProfessorPhilosophy