This semester I am trying two new things in my classes.
First of all, I am declaring the classroom a "technology-free" zone. While in the past I've only had a few students bring laptops, and those students have been good students who remained highly engaged in class, last semester suddenly a lot of students started bringing laptops and smartphones, using them in ways that clearly disengaged them from class discussions. It also became clear that those students missed a lot that we went over in class. So, this semester I am going to ban laptop computers, cell phones, and smartphones from class, explaining that I want us to focus on each other and on the discussion happening in the classroom.
Second, I am going to start each class with five minutes of quiet meditation. I have in the past used meditation in some classes, where it was obviously relevant to introduce students to a variety of meditation techniques. And the students have really loved this. And so now I've decided to do this in all of my classes, and for every class session, simply because it is good for us. It quiets the mind, and prepares us all to focus.
Related to both of the above, I am going to make time now and then to talk in class about how to think more consciously about how we live our lives.
I'll report back about how this goes.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Public vs. Private
As a society we have divided into Red and Blue ghettoes. Liberals and conservatives talk only to each other and look with contempt on those in the opposite camp. The complaints that each side makes about the other offer a curious parallel. Conservatives claim that liberals are too individualistic when it comes to sex. There need to be public standards of sexual behavior, conservatives think. Liberals tend to think that homosexuals should be allowed to marry, that adults should not discourage teenagers from having sex so long as they use condoms, that women can raise children just fine without fathers, that high divorce rates are nothing to worry about and that couples living together for short or long periods of time without marriage is fine and healthy. Conservatives tend to disagree with all of the above. They would usually encapsulate their views on sex as “supporting marriage” and they would describe this collection of liberal attitudes as “attacking marriage.” In short, conservatives think that sex is not a purely private matter and that society as a whole should exercise some measure of control over the sexual behavior of individuals. Hard line conservatives want standards of sexual conduct enforced with legal sanctions. Liberal individualism about sex is seen as promotion of selfishness that is destructive to a healthy social order. Conservatives see a social order breaking down with harmful effects on everyone. Leaving individuals completely “free” to pursue their own sexual happiness leads to the destruction of the familial relations which are the essential to the health of society and ultimately to the happiness of individuals themselves. The search for sexual gratification unrestricted by social sanctions of any kind paradoxically leads to individual misery.
When it comes to money conservatives think that liberals are not individualistic enough. Here the key word is not “marriage” but “socialism.” Liberals want the government to be active in solving some of society’s problems. Government should place restrictions of business to protect the environment from degradation, to protect workers from discrimination based on sex or race, to protect consumers from dangerous and defective products. They want society to support healthcare, education, and public transportation. Liberals recognize that all this costs money and see nothing wrong with taxing the rich to pay for it. When it comes to money, conservatives think, individuals should do whatever they want and the public needs to back off. Taxes should be low and rates should not be higher for the wealthy. People should pay for their own medical care and for the educational needs of their own children. If they feel their employer is discriminating against them, they should quit and find a new job. Consumers should protect themselves by researching products before they buy them. And finally, the threat that unrestricted business activity poses to the environment is wildly exaggerated.
Looking at society from the liberal point of view reverses all this as if looking into a mirror. Conservative resistance to “socialism” is a sign of selfish individualism which blinds itself to public good. Economic activity is too important to be left to unrestricted free markets. Laissez faire capitalism would naturally destroy our natural environment, reduce the middle class to poverty, and ultimately destroy itself by collecting more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Common sense demands a measure of public control of economic activity because completely “free” economic activity leads to moral disaster. On the sexual side of things, conservatives lack respect for individuals and their power to make choices unconstrained by society. The conservative sneer at “socialism” in economic matters is paralleled here by the liberal sneer at the “Puritanism” of conservatives.
The Red/Blue divide thus takes the shape of a disagreement about where to draw the line between public and private. Liberals want sexual relations to be purely private but think there should be a larger measure of public control of economic relations. Conservatives believe that society must support marriage and exert some measure of control over personal sexual behavior but that society should never interfere with “capitalistic acts between consenting adults.” Both sides see themselves as being unbending defenders of freedom where they think such freedom is appropriate and as being sensible opponents of due restraint where they think that such “freedom” is actually selfish irresponsibility.
In 1982 MacIntyre described our modern situation as a desolate one in which people could not reason with each other about what was right and what was wrong and instead could only express their anger and engage in ruthless political maneuvering to achieve their own favored ends. Now that we are in the second decade of the 21st century the modern situation looks even more like this than it did in 1982. Few, very few, liberals will actually make a serious attempt to argue that unrestricted sexual behavior will actually promote the well-being of society. Generally this is simply assumed and those who disagree are sneered at. Few, very few, conservatives will actually make a serious attempt to argue that the invisible hand of the marketplace solves all problems in the long run. Generally the mere use of the label “socialism” is considered enough of an argument.
Pity the poor moderate who seeks compromise and gets sneered at by both sides.
When it comes to money conservatives think that liberals are not individualistic enough. Here the key word is not “marriage” but “socialism.” Liberals want the government to be active in solving some of society’s problems. Government should place restrictions of business to protect the environment from degradation, to protect workers from discrimination based on sex or race, to protect consumers from dangerous and defective products. They want society to support healthcare, education, and public transportation. Liberals recognize that all this costs money and see nothing wrong with taxing the rich to pay for it. When it comes to money, conservatives think, individuals should do whatever they want and the public needs to back off. Taxes should be low and rates should not be higher for the wealthy. People should pay for their own medical care and for the educational needs of their own children. If they feel their employer is discriminating against them, they should quit and find a new job. Consumers should protect themselves by researching products before they buy them. And finally, the threat that unrestricted business activity poses to the environment is wildly exaggerated.
Looking at society from the liberal point of view reverses all this as if looking into a mirror. Conservative resistance to “socialism” is a sign of selfish individualism which blinds itself to public good. Economic activity is too important to be left to unrestricted free markets. Laissez faire capitalism would naturally destroy our natural environment, reduce the middle class to poverty, and ultimately destroy itself by collecting more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Common sense demands a measure of public control of economic activity because completely “free” economic activity leads to moral disaster. On the sexual side of things, conservatives lack respect for individuals and their power to make choices unconstrained by society. The conservative sneer at “socialism” in economic matters is paralleled here by the liberal sneer at the “Puritanism” of conservatives.
The Red/Blue divide thus takes the shape of a disagreement about where to draw the line between public and private. Liberals want sexual relations to be purely private but think there should be a larger measure of public control of economic relations. Conservatives believe that society must support marriage and exert some measure of control over personal sexual behavior but that society should never interfere with “capitalistic acts between consenting adults.” Both sides see themselves as being unbending defenders of freedom where they think such freedom is appropriate and as being sensible opponents of due restraint where they think that such “freedom” is actually selfish irresponsibility.
In 1982 MacIntyre described our modern situation as a desolate one in which people could not reason with each other about what was right and what was wrong and instead could only express their anger and engage in ruthless political maneuvering to achieve their own favored ends. Now that we are in the second decade of the 21st century the modern situation looks even more like this than it did in 1982. Few, very few, liberals will actually make a serious attempt to argue that unrestricted sexual behavior will actually promote the well-being of society. Generally this is simply assumed and those who disagree are sneered at. Few, very few, conservatives will actually make a serious attempt to argue that the invisible hand of the marketplace solves all problems in the long run. Generally the mere use of the label “socialism” is considered enough of an argument.
Pity the poor moderate who seeks compromise and gets sneered at by both sides.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Teaching to students with disabilities
What has been your experience teaching to deaf and hard-of-hearing students?
A little background:
I will be teaching at RIT starting next week, and a significant part of the RIT culture is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. 9 out of the 75 students currently signed up for my courses are in the NTID; in orientation we've already been given some preliminary tips on how to integrate these students into the class, and of course there are many other resources available at RIT.
That said, in my decade plus of teaching, I've only had one deaf student, and it was a mixed experience for me. I got used to having a translator in the classroom, and had positive interactions with the student in and out of class. However, her written work seemed limited by the grammar of ASL, and I worried that my lectures never quite made it through translation (admittedly, she should have been able to keep up through the required reading).
Do you have any positive (or negative) experiences you'd be willing to share?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Avatar and Philosophy
The idea of modern European/American people “going native” is not new. At first it was overwhelmingly viewed as a very bad thing. As far back as the 17th century the Pope worried that the missionaries he had sent to covert the Chinese were becoming Chinese instead. After James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans Americans devoured horror stories about white women being forced to go native. In the 19th century the British worried about officers and men stationed too long in India losing their British identity and this is a theme in some of Kipling’s tales. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) depicts going native in Africa as a horrifying descent into madness and evil. At some point in the 20th century the tide shifted and “going native” started to seem appealing rather than appalling. Dancing with Wolves depicts a white American shifting loyalty from American culture to the Lakota as something positive. In 2010 Avatar takes the going native theme and transports it into a beautiful science fiction setting and becomes the most popular movie of all times. Is this merely due to the stunning visual effects or did the movie make the idea of going native hypnotically appealing?
In Avatar Jake, a paraplegic ex-Marine is feeling useless and abandoned in an ugly world. The world of 2154 in which Jake lives is much like ours but darker, dirtier and nastier. Nature has been all but completely destroyed and human relationships are coarse, violent and exploitive. Medical science has the ability to heal Jake and let him walk again but society won’t pay for the operation. Jake has been left by society to fend for himself and he’s not doing very well. Jake shows no trace of anger or rebelliousness at his treatment by society. His whole attitude and demeanor is that of hopelessness. Jake is offered a chance to pay for the operation and get his legs back by taking his brother’s place in an expedition to an alien world. The organization that hires Jake has tremendous resources at its disposal and pursues its economic ends with unblinking ruthlessness. His mission is to infiltrate the alien culture and get them to sell their natural resources in exchange for modern consumer goods. But the Na’vi do not like the deal. They prefer to live simple lives in harmony with each other and with the animals and plants that make up their natural environment. They do not want to be like us. They don’t want to trade their forest homes for Ipods. Jake is stranded among the natives. They don’t like Jake but they take him in. They live in harmony with nature and with each other. Jake comes to feel that that this simple natural life is better than the world he left behind. A moment of crisis arrives and Jake finds his loyalties have firmly switched to his new people. There is a climactic battle in which the Na’vi win and a conclusion in which Jake abandons his human body and permanently becomes an alien.
The movie appeals to so many because so many feel like Jake does at the beginning of the story. He feels as though he’s been used and abandoned by a grimy, violent, uncaring society. Jake sees no reason to hope that things will get better for himself or for society as a whole. Life is hard and business is business. Nothing, not nature or the feelings of sensitive people, is going to interfere with the juggernaut of modern civilization. Mother Nature and poor little Jake are powerless. Resistance, shall we say, is futile. In the movie Jake escapes from the bleakness of modern life and finds love, harmony and right order among the Na’vi. The feel-good victory of Mother Nature depicted in the film is exposed as fantasy by the time the moviegoer gets to the parking lot to drive home. You are not on Pandora and there’s no way back. We told you that resistance was futile. Little wonder that some moviegoers felt depressed in the weeks following the movie.
Why is any of this of interest to a philosopher? Because it is evidence that many people feel something is deeply wrong with modern society and the lives it encourages us to live. Things are not in right order. If there is a deep dissatisfaction with the way things are then this is a call to philosophers to think deeply about how things should be.
In Avatar Jake, a paraplegic ex-Marine is feeling useless and abandoned in an ugly world. The world of 2154 in which Jake lives is much like ours but darker, dirtier and nastier. Nature has been all but completely destroyed and human relationships are coarse, violent and exploitive. Medical science has the ability to heal Jake and let him walk again but society won’t pay for the operation. Jake has been left by society to fend for himself and he’s not doing very well. Jake shows no trace of anger or rebelliousness at his treatment by society. His whole attitude and demeanor is that of hopelessness. Jake is offered a chance to pay for the operation and get his legs back by taking his brother’s place in an expedition to an alien world. The organization that hires Jake has tremendous resources at its disposal and pursues its economic ends with unblinking ruthlessness. His mission is to infiltrate the alien culture and get them to sell their natural resources in exchange for modern consumer goods. But the Na’vi do not like the deal. They prefer to live simple lives in harmony with each other and with the animals and plants that make up their natural environment. They do not want to be like us. They don’t want to trade their forest homes for Ipods. Jake is stranded among the natives. They don’t like Jake but they take him in. They live in harmony with nature and with each other. Jake comes to feel that that this simple natural life is better than the world he left behind. A moment of crisis arrives and Jake finds his loyalties have firmly switched to his new people. There is a climactic battle in which the Na’vi win and a conclusion in which Jake abandons his human body and permanently becomes an alien.
The movie appeals to so many because so many feel like Jake does at the beginning of the story. He feels as though he’s been used and abandoned by a grimy, violent, uncaring society. Jake sees no reason to hope that things will get better for himself or for society as a whole. Life is hard and business is business. Nothing, not nature or the feelings of sensitive people, is going to interfere with the juggernaut of modern civilization. Mother Nature and poor little Jake are powerless. Resistance, shall we say, is futile. In the movie Jake escapes from the bleakness of modern life and finds love, harmony and right order among the Na’vi. The feel-good victory of Mother Nature depicted in the film is exposed as fantasy by the time the moviegoer gets to the parking lot to drive home. You are not on Pandora and there’s no way back. We told you that resistance was futile. Little wonder that some moviegoers felt depressed in the weeks following the movie.
Why is any of this of interest to a philosopher? Because it is evidence that many people feel something is deeply wrong with modern society and the lives it encourages us to live. Things are not in right order. If there is a deep dissatisfaction with the way things are then this is a call to philosophers to think deeply about how things should be.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Summing Up
The course is over. It's been an exhausting five and a half weeks. I won't post any more on this since there seems to be no interest in discussing how to teach basic intro. This disappoints me since I think it is in some ways the most important course any of us teach.
I think that my efforts to tie the core areas of epistemology and metaphysics to ethics was a success. My students, at least the better ones, saw the connection and it made epistemology seem meaningful and not farfetched. The key was building the whole course around Glaucon's question to Socrates in the Republic: "how then, shall we live?" Only the most unthinking person fails to understand and appreciate the force of this question. It is the question that fired my interest over forty years ago when I first stumbled upon philosophy and I find that returning to it and making it the center of my intro course is the most honest and direct way of making the case for why students should devote at least a little serious thought to abstract and difficult ideas.
What's wrong with professional philosophy in general and analytic philosophy in particular is that most professional philosophers now look down their noses at such a "juvenile" and "unprofessional" way of looking at philosophy. I cannot disagree more with this kind of elitism. Philosophy that strays too far from this root is merely self-indulgent sophistry.
I think that my efforts to tie the core areas of epistemology and metaphysics to ethics was a success. My students, at least the better ones, saw the connection and it made epistemology seem meaningful and not farfetched. The key was building the whole course around Glaucon's question to Socrates in the Republic: "how then, shall we live?" Only the most unthinking person fails to understand and appreciate the force of this question. It is the question that fired my interest over forty years ago when I first stumbled upon philosophy and I find that returning to it and making it the center of my intro course is the most honest and direct way of making the case for why students should devote at least a little serious thought to abstract and difficult ideas.
What's wrong with professional philosophy in general and analytic philosophy in particular is that most professional philosophers now look down their noses at such a "juvenile" and "unprofessional" way of looking at philosophy. I cannot disagree more with this kind of elitism. Philosophy that strays too far from this root is merely self-indulgent sophistry.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Midpoint in the course
We have reached the midpoint of summer school. It's too soon to say whether my experiment of trying to emphasize the connection of metaphysics to ethics will spark more interest latter on because I haven't hit Descartes yet. When discussing Aristotle I stressed that his view of happiness is directly tied to his view of human nature and that what human nature really is does not seem to be merely a matter of opinion but rather some kind of objective fact. I think I was successful in getting them to see Aristotle's view of ethics as a live option for them. I don't think they see him as just another "dead white guy."
I introduce Epicureanism by comparing it with Buddhism. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism represents a theory about human life that is both more radical and more negative than Epicureanism but extremely similar in its motivations.
A couple of highlights: "A stomach can be full but a bank account is never full." worked well as an illustration of the Epicurean doctrine about the difference between natural and socially conditioned desires. My comparison of Epicureans to potheads drew some smiles of recognition in my students.
I tried to show that these ideas are not locked into the past by briefly discussing Mill's attempts to answer the standard objections to Epicureanism a thousand years later. I also spoke about the paradox of hedonism and its possible connection with Mill's depression. "Since pleasure is the by-product of pursuing other goods when you desire pleasure itself you cut the ground from under your own feet. Pleasure become impossible."
I can say that I have at least a few students who seem intensely interested in the course thus far. Naturally there are also those who are obviously just taking the course to pick up a humanities credit and want nothing more than that. I'll have a better sense of how much this is sinking into their minds when I grade the midterm tomorrow.
I introduce Epicureanism by comparing it with Buddhism. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism represents a theory about human life that is both more radical and more negative than Epicureanism but extremely similar in its motivations.
A couple of highlights: "A stomach can be full but a bank account is never full." worked well as an illustration of the Epicurean doctrine about the difference between natural and socially conditioned desires. My comparison of Epicureans to potheads drew some smiles of recognition in my students.
I tried to show that these ideas are not locked into the past by briefly discussing Mill's attempts to answer the standard objections to Epicureanism a thousand years later. I also spoke about the paradox of hedonism and its possible connection with Mill's depression. "Since pleasure is the by-product of pursuing other goods when you desire pleasure itself you cut the ground from under your own feet. Pleasure become impossible."
I can say that I have at least a few students who seem intensely interested in the course thus far. Naturally there are also those who are obviously just taking the course to pick up a humanities credit and want nothing more than that. I'll have a better sense of how much this is sinking into their minds when I grade the midterm tomorrow.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Revising Intro
I start summer school next week and one of the two courses I'm doing is Intro again. I want to change the structure slightly in order to maximize what went well and minimize what didn't.
What went well was the first half of the course where I concentrated on value issues as they arise in Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans. The students saw the point of thinking about the nature of the good life and could understand and mostly appreciate the different perspectives offered. But when I switched away from ethics to metaphysics and epistemology with Descartes and Berkeley, they lost most of their interest.
I'm going to try to correct this by tieing the metaphysics and epistemology to the ethics. Ethics will continue to be the foundation but then I plan to point out that what kind of universe we inhabit makes a difference to what kind of life it is sensible to live. The epicureans are materialists and their hedonism makes sense from that perspective. The Stoics take a more spiritual view of reality and their insistence that virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness makes sense from that perspective. So, making a rational choice between Epicureanism and Stoicism would require figuring out if the world was fundamentally spiritual or material. Now when we ask: how do the Stoics know that the world is fundamentally spiritual skepticism takes on a more practical aspect.
Concretely I plan to bounce around from one philosopher to another much more than I did in the Spring. I want to show the students how all the particular topics covered in philosophy are interrelated and form part of one BIG conversation.
This is a somewhat risky strategy. Bouncing around too much may look more chaotic and less unified if I don't do it well. But if I do it right, it should produce a greater sense of unity.
I plan to post a few comments to report how this is going and if there seems to be any interest I will continue posting comments.
What went well was the first half of the course where I concentrated on value issues as they arise in Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans. The students saw the point of thinking about the nature of the good life and could understand and mostly appreciate the different perspectives offered. But when I switched away from ethics to metaphysics and epistemology with Descartes and Berkeley, they lost most of their interest.
I'm going to try to correct this by tieing the metaphysics and epistemology to the ethics. Ethics will continue to be the foundation but then I plan to point out that what kind of universe we inhabit makes a difference to what kind of life it is sensible to live. The epicureans are materialists and their hedonism makes sense from that perspective. The Stoics take a more spiritual view of reality and their insistence that virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness makes sense from that perspective. So, making a rational choice between Epicureanism and Stoicism would require figuring out if the world was fundamentally spiritual or material. Now when we ask: how do the Stoics know that the world is fundamentally spiritual skepticism takes on a more practical aspect.
Concretely I plan to bounce around from one philosopher to another much more than I did in the Spring. I want to show the students how all the particular topics covered in philosophy are interrelated and form part of one BIG conversation.
This is a somewhat risky strategy. Bouncing around too much may look more chaotic and less unified if I don't do it well. But if I do it right, it should produce a greater sense of unity.
I plan to post a few comments to report how this is going and if there seems to be any interest I will continue posting comments.
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