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?
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11 comments:
Your recommendation is hardly Utopian. I consider it critically important. Businesses desperately need people who know how to think logically, comprehensively, and factually about a situation and then determine an appropriate course of action. Ideally, this is a fundamental part of parenting--but one that is often neglected. I applaud your effort to make critical thinking part of the curriculum.
Please join in our dialogue about critical thinking at http://blog.actionm.com.
Thanks, Richard, for starting us off again, and Joe for your comment. Allow me to chime in with a comment that is oversimplified (granted), a bit provocative (by design), but still three-quarters serious.
I sometimes wonder (although I am no historian of the disciplines) whether it is so very true that philosophy has lost so much of its importance in the curriculum. In asserting that I sometimes wonder whether we are not romanticizing a bit. Is it really that what we now call philosophy was ever so central, or is it rather that much of what used to be called philosophy now goes by other names, like, for example, pretty much the whole of the social sciences (and not too long before that the natural sciences as well, under the name of “natural philosophy”)?
But let us concede that something has been lost, in any case, and that philosophy is being eclipsed by other disciplines vying for preeminence in the university (and even more so in the consciousness of society at large). I am tempted to suggest that this may not be the fault of other disciplines claiming territory that is the rightful province of philosophy, but because philosophy itself has lost its nerve, and its integrity. Over the past hundred years or so, philosophy has been scared off (and rightly so, in some respects) from the too grandiose, totalizing visions offered perhaps most paradigmatically by a Plato or a Hegel, ... too grand (even slightly embarrassing) for our time because these visions do not stand a spirit’s chance in a lab of living up to the demands of testability and rigor demanded by empirical and methodological science, this latter being the Lord of our age. As such, philosophy (in what may be one of the most excessive overcorrections on record) has hung on for its dear life by transforming itself into the housekeeper of science, earning its keep by trying to keep science’s ideas (language and logic) in order, neat and tidy, but without any real “content” of its own, while science goes merrily on its way (which is no insult to science!). Well, perhaps this needs to be done, but it will hardly attract either the respect or excitement of students or colleagues, college deans or deep-pocketed donors.
For that (if that is worth going for, which is far from certain), I think, philosophy must recover something of its grandeur, or at least some of its dignity. If philosophy is to have a bigger role in the curriculum, it will first have to offer its own “bigger” (grander) curriculum. We have perhaps been outmaneuvered, but we are also very likely where at present we deserve to be. Critical thinking is important, vitally important, like doing the dishes (which is no insult either to critical thinking or doing dishes!). But falling in love with wisdom, ... that has cachet!
While I'm not a professional historian either I'm convinced that the loss of philosophy's influence and prestige is largely real and not a product of a romanticized vision of the past.
"because philosophy itself has lost its nerve, and its integrity." That, indeed is the real problem. "philosophy (in what may be one of the most excessive overcorrections on record) has hung on for its dear life by transforming itself into the housekeeper of science" Again, right on target this time with a more specific analysis of the problem. "Without any real “content” of its own . . . (which) will hardly attract either the respect or excitement of students or colleagues, college deans or deep-pocketed donors." Minor quibble here, deans, in my experience have no interest in the real worth of any ideas and respond only to whatever numbers are being crunched within the bowels of their bureaucracy. But they do respond to what grant agencies are willing to spend money on. So the fact that people outside academia won't spend money on philosophy does negatively affect us. But once more the heart of the problem is quite accurately stated--we essentially have nothing to say and that marginalizes us from the culture. In the past Plato, Descartes, Locke, etc. had something of importance to say to Everyman. It was no doubt wrong in some ways (though I would contend each had something valuable and right to say as well) but at least it wasn't trivial.
Compare that to thirty years of Frankfort examples or forty years of Gettier problems or digging further back hundreds of articles on "grue" and the new problem of induction. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.
So....this problem was the one I was trying to solve by turning to the conceptualistic pragmatism of C.I. Lewis. Have any of you guys thought further about whether my proposed solution actually works?
Thanks, Richard, for your generous reading of my little rant, ... more generous than I probably deserved. Perhaps I should move on to address a bit more closely what it is you’re inquiring about. (I’ll still need to do more background work on C. I. Lewis before I can begin to meaningfully engage you on that, I’m afraid.)
I suppose I am doubly fortunate, on the one hand, to teach in a small, liberal arts university college that still demands two foundational philosophy courses of every student regardless of program (although certain very tight science programs have dispensation to require only one), and on the other hand to have a dean who, while restricted by budgetary realities, is still governed by the desire to do what is best academically speaking rather than by bureaucratic concerns.
Yet, despite this, and despite the fact that my colleague in philosophy (we are a very small department of only two) and I are both very popular teachers (not to brag, but students say so), we still have trouble drawing students as majors in sufficient numbers to justify expanding our department. Part of the issue is that philosophy is seen as impractical, and another part is that the quality of student who normally becomes attracted to philosophy is often attracted to (even several) other disciplines as well, and usually arrives at university already committed to another major. (We convert a number of these to philosophy minors, but few as majors.) So, Richard, I am not sure if this is a variant of your frustration, or of another kind.
But the issue remains close to the same: how to encourage an interest in what it is that we do and that we find so valuable (without succumbing to the arrogance of thinking everyone should be a philosopher), and thereby to make a deeper and broader contribution to university and cultural life (including, but not limited to, encouraging more astute perspectives on political rhetoric - and so I am in favor of “critical thinking” after all!). My own sense is that we will not likely succeed if we set this up as a competition for attention and prestige and resources between philosophy and other disciplines (despite being almost forced to think this way given the budgeting process, etc.). We may do better to cooperate (and by “better” I am not advocating this simply on utilitarian grounds, but because it is a genuinely “better” thing to do), and by showing - if we can - what we have to offer to other disciplines, making ourselves more valuable with (and not only “to”) them, and not merely as over against them. However, I am not sure how to do that, to be honest.
One effort I am making is to co-teach courses with professors from other disciplines, bringing philosophical concerns to other discussions and being challenged by their concerns. I have taught, a couple of years back, a course with a physicist and a sociologist (a Templeton course entitled: God, Physics, and the Human Prospect), last year co-taught a course (in philosophical anthropology) with a psychologist, next year will co-teach a philosophy of the sciences course with a biologist and a psychologist, and am trying to tempt an economist into doing a course with me on Marx. Granted, much of this needs to be done as an “extra,” as team taught courses do not count as a full course in teaching load calculations (I’m attempting to dispute this, as they are just as much work, and sometimes more), but my early indications are that they are worth doing (for me and my colleagues, and for students), and may be one way of raising the awareness, respect and demand for philosophy in our institutions (although that has not been among my motivations so far, it might have that effect), and in a way that is enticing to colleagues in other disciplines rather than being perceived as a turf war. Or is this, too, ridiculously utopian?
jeff,
Having just finished my last class of the day I happened to get your most recent comment immediately.
How about if I send you the final copy of the paper that arose out of my talk at FAHE this summer. I say "final" because I'm hoping it will be accepted for publication in its present form, but who really knows how many more revisions it will actually go through.
We certainly should avoid the arrogance that only philosophy is valuable and everyone should study philosophy. We'd all starve if everyone took that advice!
I team taught a course on the History of Technology about ten years ago and it was 1) a lot of work, 2) very intellectually stimulating for me. I'm less sure that it was a good experience for the students. I think that undergraduates who are not yet well grounded in any discipline most often just get confused by interdisciplinary studies. At best only the very, very best students can handle it. But for them it's great. Some good comes from these personal contacts with people outside of philosophy but I think that some deeper change in the way we do philosophy is going to be necessary.
I suspect that your experience with deans is better than mine since you are at a smaller school. Bureaucracy is a much bigger problem at large universities.
Shall I send you a copy of the paper?
Yes, please, Richard. I'd enjoy reading your paper. I'll send you my e-mail address (as I have yours).
While the "blog" is a great start, we might perhaps also benefit from a site where we could post longer papers, for our mutual consideration and edification, and to spark some more substantial discussion. The blog is not the right forum for that. I'm musing on how that might be done.
By the time a student is old enough for a course in logic it is almost too late. Their thinking skills are already chaotic and their language skills so poor that the rigid mental processes required are too difficult.
I seriously considered philosophy as a career but decided the entire concept of thinking skills must be re-thought and presented in a form that children and the guy on the street can use in everyday life.
We need to start in elementary grades with simple lessons in critical thinking. Claim, reason and evidence are about all a child needs to start the process of seing themselves as a thinker instead of the data.
Currently the system pours data into their heads without any rules or tools for processing the data in a manner that can produce valid results.
Half of all lifetime mental illness is diagnosable by age fourteen. This is nothing more than what could be predicted in a population of untaught minds developing their own data handling processes.
Depression will soon be ranked the second greatest health burden on the planet. It already is in the age group 15-44.
Critical thinking with an aim of teaching students how to control negative emotions by using simple logic MUST be taught in the very early grades.
Their very lives depend on it.
Thanks,
Doug McKee CRNA
Doug,
I agree with you that ideally we ought not to wait until they are in college. Your comment: "By the time a student is old enough for a course in logic it is almost too late." is very nearly true. But I do find that a good college level course in applied logic does work for many of my students. They have never learned to think but during the semester the light bulb turns on and quite a few of them "get it." But there is no good educational reason to wait so long. Logic should be taught in middle school.
I also agree with you that students need to learn how to recognize their own emotional states and to understand the positive and negative effects of emotions. On the surface teaching people to reason logically and teaching them to understand emotions seem to be totally different things, however there are deeper connections as you suggest. I am also a volunteer chess coach at one of the local high schools and I find that teaching the students about how their emotions can interfere with their thinking during a chessgame is an important part of teaching them the game. It's also teaching them something important about life.
Google Docs might be a good way to share papers without unduly clogging the blog.
It seems to me that the biggest constraint on reading and commenting on each other's work is not being able to send the copies to each other. The real problem is time. We are all busy and reading somebody's paper will cost about 3 hours of this very limited commodity.
So, that said, I must thank you folks for your comments at FAHE this summer and thank jeff again for agreeing to read the current revised version.
Thanks, Craig, for the suggestion about a place to store/share documents. Another good possibility to look into.
Agreed, Richard, time is precious, and rare. For my own part, I'm "trying" (not always succeeding) to be less "busy" (does that equal less "self important"?), and to give my time to what matters. Reading your paper, connecting with my Quaker/Philosophy colleagues, I deem worth my time.
And, briefly, let me agree with Doug that information is not knowledge.
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