new ideas for intro to philosophy

I am teaching intro to philosophy this semester and will be trying out some new-to-me ideas. If anyone seems interested I will post short reports on how the experiment is working.

I like to use classic texts. In the past I have lectured on each philosopher one by one. What I found I didn't like about this approach is that it fails to convey to the student that these texts are part of a dialogue that continues throughout history. So now I will be mixing it up more.

In the opening lecture I asked them what justice was and got a few attempted answers which I poked holes in. Then I presented them with William James' little example of the man chasing the squirrel around a tree. The squirrel always moves so that the tree trunk remains between him and the man. James says that the question: does the man go around the squirrel has a clear yes or no answer so long as you have a clear definition of "go around." I explained that much of what philosophers do is try to get clear definitions not of trivial stuff like "go around" but of important things like "justice." Then in the second lecture we began the Euthyphro and I showed them that Euthyphro was unclear about "piety" and that his problems were similar to some of the problems that arose in our discussion of "justice."

I explained the difficulty that people have with defining concepts this way. We learn most concepts my ostention. So we develop a bunch of examples in our heads. Most ordinary concepts seem to be nothing more than a montage of pictures in our heads. No wonder then that Euthyphro, when asked to define piety, just points to a couple of examples.

Students seemed to relate to the idea that ordinary concepts are a montage of pictures. Freedom is a flag waving, jets streaking overhead, a little kid saluting at a parade, etc. It is a good thing, I told them, that Thomas Jefferson had a clearer concept of freedom in his head when he sat down to write the Constitution. His clearer concept enabled him to thoughtfully design a form of government that would promote freedom.

So far the class seems to be going well.