I’ve been educating Introduction to Philosophy at Tuskegee College for roughly 5 years. The course helps fulfill a basic training requirement and, whereas we’ve a small (and rising) philosophy minor, we don’t provide a serious. My course often is the solely philosophy course a lot of my college students ever take. As such, I wish to introduce college students to a sampling of philosophical points whereas additionally serving to them acknowledge and acquire pleasure for participating with philosophy exterior our classroom. I largely attempt to obtain this by way of my assignments and the narrative I create for my college students. So, you would possibly miss a few of the methods I’ve used in the event you focus solely on the assigned readings.
From my vantage level, one of the best determination I made was redesigning the course as a flipped classroom. College students are assigned quick movies (between 10 and quarter-hour) as homework earlier than our class conferences. I take advantage of Playposit to embed questions immediately within the movies. These questions assist be certain that college students listen and have interaction with the movies; so, most questions are simple and pop-up nearly instantly after being mentioned within the video. I can’t emphasize sufficient how a lot this opened our class conferences. Now, I not often introduce any new materials to college students throughout our class conferences. As a substitute, I can dedicate class conferences nearly totally to participating in dialogue and artistic class actions.
I additionally attempt to expose college students to totally different mediums for participating with philosophy. I already talked about movies. Some movies deal with introducing a subject or argument—I created a lot of movies alone, however I additionally use freely out there movies equivalent to these at www.wi-phi.com. Different movies present pupil interviews with philosophers. Nonetheless different movies present examples for dialogue. As an example, throughout our free will unit, I assign a video demonstration of a Libet-style experiment. Nevertheless, college students are additionally launched to philosophy in dialogue kind, quick encyclopedia-style articles, yet another sturdy (however nonetheless comparatively quick) guide remedy, podcasts, and some on-line information articles. I hope college students depart the course with the impression that there are a number of methods to have interaction with philosophy past simply historic texts or educational articles.
The narrative I purpose to weave all through the course goals to attach conventional summary philosophical matters to concrete and modern points. One instance is that I wrap up our free will unit with a Hi-Phi Nation podcast episode “Willful Acts” as an example how questions on free will hook up with questions on ethical (and authorized) duty inside the context of habit. Nevertheless, I believe my epistemology unit is the place I finest join conventional and modern considerations. We begin with Descartes’ 1st and a pair ofnd Meditations. I deal with the thought of Descartes trying to make use of doubt as a useful gizmo for gaining data to distinction this with the following a part of the unit that identifies potential epistemic dangers of doubt. We learn Thi C. Nguyen’s Aeon piece on echo chambers. I body our dialogue once more by way of elevating doubts, however this time as doubts concerning the trustworthiness of outsiders. Subsequent, we learn picks from Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice and talk about how doubts will be the results of prejudice. Lastly, we learn a Nation article by Melissa Harris-Perry about dangerous epistemic practices inside discussions of race. We talk about her examples as circumstances of epistemic injustice and the way they appear to contain folks abusing the observe of elevating doubts. Class conferences deal with discussions and actions the place college students creatively interact with their very own strategies for distinguishing productive makes use of of doubt and the way doubt will be misused. Many college students convey up the concept that Descartes (ostensibly) focuses on elevating doubts about his personal beliefs whereas many examples of echo chambers and epistemic injustice contain elevating doubts about different folks’s beliefs. Different college students rapidly level out the boundaries of this distinction, however that is the form of artistic and exploratory dialogue I purpose to encourage.
I additionally purpose to assist college students make philosophical concepts related to their lived experiences. A lot of that is executed by way of in-class actions, however these are sometimes smaller variations of actions that kind the premise of a bigger journal/reflection project they submit close to the semester’s finish. This bigger project has college students interact in an exercise impressed by a philosophical thought, preserve journal entries on their expertise, after which use this materials to replicate on the assigned texts. College students are given a number of choices for this. One choice asks college students to make use of Descartes’ methodology of doubt as inspiration for creating their very own strategies for figuring out on-line misinformation, making use of that methodology to their very own social media feeds over a number of days, and journaling about their expertise. A second choice asks college students to investigate necessary choices from their very own lives, to replicate on situational elements that will have influenced these choices, after which relate this to our readings on free will. A 3rd (and newer choice) asks college students to journal their very own experiences interacting with synthetic intelligence packages equivalent to ChatGPT or Dall-E and relating this again to our dialogue of AI and AI bias.
Nevertheless, there are weaknesses within the course that I’m nonetheless working to handle. First, I can nonetheless higher incorporate much less conventional philosophical mediums. As an example, in my ethics course, I not too long ago began together with Audre Lorde’s poetry with a lot success. I wish to do one thing related in my Intro. to Philosophy. Second, my philosophy of faith unit wants essentially the most work to realize my acknowledged targets. It’s presently a reasonably conventional unit targeted on arguments for a conventional conception of God and the issue of evil; there may be extra novel, fascinating, and inclusive work being executed inside the philosophy of faith right this moment. I repeatedly inform myself that I’ll substitute this unit however, once I survey my college students, a big portion inform me this was one among their favorites. Furthermore, a lot of my college students come from non secular backgrounds making this subject really feel extra acquainted and simpler to leap into for them. And, so, I proceed to debate what I ought to do with this unit.
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Samuel Taylor
Samuel Taylor is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tuskegee College. Earlier than beginning at Tuskegee, he was beforehand a visiting assistant professor on the College of Minnesota – Duluth and an teacher at Auburn College. His research and publications deal with points in epistemology equivalent to introspective justification, inference, and skepticism. In his educating he focuses on creating an inclusive studying setting and emphasizes the ways in which philosophical pondering is relevant to pupil’s lives exterior the classroom.
