Teaching and Learning > DISCOURSE

Some Reflections on Recent Philosophy Teaching Scholarship

Author: John Sellars

Journal Title: PRS-LTSN Journal

ISSN:

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Volume: 2

Number: 1

Start page: 110

End page: 127

Return to vol. 2 no. 1 index page

I. Introduction

For six months I have been employed by the PRS-LTSN as an Academic Reviewer. This position has involved reading and reviewing past volumes of the American journal Teaching Philosophy as well as material from a number of other sources. In particular, I have read the entire contents of over six volumes of Teaching Philosophy, some 129 articles, and out of those 129 I have written reviews of 761. The following remarks are general reflections on the scholarship devoted to the teaching of philosophy that I have encountered in Teaching Philosophy. They are not meant as comments on the quality of this particular journal or on the judgements of its editors but rather as more general comments on the state of existing research devoted to the teaching of philosophy. I shall follow these comments with some suggestions regarding areas where future work may be helpful.

II. Central Themes of Existing Scholarship

The range of topics discussed in the existing literature is surprisingly narrow. In my ‘sample’ of 129 articles only a handful of themes emerge. These include:

Naturally, there are other contributions that fall outside of these categories, but nevertheless the majority of the articles that I have read fall into one or other of these groups. I shall comment on each in turn.

 

a) Personal Reflections

Personal reflections about an individual’s own experiences teaching philosophy are generally of limited value2. More often than not, the poorest material falls into this category. Such contributions rarely offer either theoretical insights or practical suggestions. Consequently, the majority of articles that fell into this category were not reviewed. Only one caught my attention: a personal reminiscence by a senior academic about her own education in Cambridge under Wittgenstein and Moore3. What was especially interesting about this piece was the way in which—when considered as teachers—the sober and scholarly Moore appeared in a significantly more favourable light than the creative and passionate Wittgenstein did. Being a good philosopher and being a good teacher are two quite different things. It is by no means obvious that they will always coincide. Indeed, attempting to be both at once may, at times, create a number of tensions.

b) Applied Ethics

A considerable proportion of the existing scholarship is only tangentially concerned with teaching philosophy itself. By this I refer to those articles devoted to the teaching of medical ethics, business ethics, legal ethics, and the like4. These subjects are taught both by staff in philosophy departments and by ‘ethicists’ within other departments. Often they appear to involve little more than the teaching of the professional codes of conduct for the relevant subject: ‘lawyers should not lie because it brings the profession into disrepute’. Such material obviously has little bearing on wider issues in philosophy pedagogy.

 

Indeed, one of the better articles that I have read in this category argues that the teaching of the ethics of another discipline should be left to staff from that discipline rather than given to a philosopher. The philosopher should perhaps play the role of the mentor or consultant, training academics from other disciplines how to teach ethics, but not actually teaching applied ethics themselves. For although a philosopher may be an expert in the complexities of moral theory, they are less likely to be familiar with the sorts of moral problems and dilemmas that are unique to a particular profession.

Another article reports the problems that can arise when philosophers do attempt to teach professional ethics6. A class of otherwise happy and motivated law students was reduced to a state of existential crisis after a compulsory course in applied legal ethics. The philosopher teaching the class managed to convince them that the adversarial legal system was inherently unjust and immoral. Some students quit law in favour of some other non-vocational subject (to the horror or their parents) while others became depressed by the morally dubious future career that they had chosen for themselves. In sum, the literature devoted to applied and professional ethics suggests that philosophers should think carefully before leaving the confines of their own departments7.

c) Logic

Articles devoted to the teaching of logic constitute a substantial proportion of the existing literature. These are rarely general reflections upon the problem of teaching a formal language to humanities students. Rather they usually take the form of a very specific suggestion designed to help the teacher explain a particular logical concept or procedure8. Yet many of the suggestions made in this literature appear (to me, a non-logician) to propose an alternative just as complex as the problem they purport to address, if not more so. Teaching logic no doubt has its own pedagogical issues and these clearly deserve attention. But the literature to date appears to be of somewhat limited value.

d) Gender and Race

A number of authors in Teaching Philosophy share a passionate concern with issues surrounding gender and race9. These authors appear to be especially concerned about the content of a typical American ‘Introduction to Philosophy’ course. Such courses usually take the form of a history of early modern philosophy, focusing upon philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant—’seven dead white European males’ as a number of contributors refer to them10.

 

It is of course important to be sensitive to issues surrounding gender and race bias but some of the suggestions that have been made in an attempt to introduce diversity into the study of the history of Western philosophy appear to be of limited value. It is a harsh fact that there are unlikely to be, for instance, many first rate female or African philosophers from the seventeenth century awaiting rediscovery. This simply reflects the social conditions of that period and I doubt that there is little that the modern teacher of philosophy can do in order to overcome the dominance of white men in the history of early modern philosophy. There have been a number of important female philosophers in past centuries, one notable example being Anne Conway. There are, thanks to improving social and cultural conditions, considerably more today.

Attempts to broaden the traditional canon of early modern Western philosophy may have limited success. However one area where there has been real neglect is in the history of Islamic philosophy, something not mentioned in any of the articles that I have read. Avicenna and Averroes—as they were known to the Latin West—formed vital influences on the development of later medieval philosophy yet they rarely figure in the range of courses usually offered to undergraduates12. Our Western predecessors acknowledged their philosophical importance, but do we? We should certainly acknowledge their historical importance. There may be a number of reasons for this neglect, including the challenges of the Arabic language for a beginner and the relative lack of textbooks and translations13. However, it may also reflect the general lack of attention received by medieval philosophy in general.

A separate issue, however, is the bias that one finds within texts from the history of Western philosophy. Hume’s sexism or Locke’s slave ownership are topics that may well benefit from class discussion, especially if they run the risk of becoming barriers between students and the philosophical material at hand. But perhaps the most important way to address issues of gender and race in the classroom is to make sure that all of one’s students are assessed solely with reference to their intellectual abilities. One hopes that this is already standard practice.

e) Motivating Students

One of the central concerns for authors in Teaching Philosophy is how one might inspire students of other subjects who are taking a compulsory introductory philosophy course14. One comes away with the impression that in the US there is a large army of philosophy teachers who only teach these sorts of courses, often in universities and colleges that do not offer full philosophy degrees. Indeed, reading articles devoted to this problem is perhaps the surest way to become convinced that philosophers should not attempt to offer general philosophy courses to undergraduates of other disciplines who probably do not want them. I imagine that there is no more depressing a teaching experience than being faced with a class of students not one of whom wants to be taught. It may be that there are some, say, Engineering students with a genuine interest in philosophy; I suspect that there are considerably more who just want to get on with studying their preferred subject16.

Some of the suggestions that have been made in these sorts of articles may nevertheless be of value. They include some more obvious tactics for encouraging discussion in the seminar room, the use of non-academic material such as films and novels, and a range of other devices designed to make seventeenth century epistemology (apparently the core of such introductory courses) relevant to the lives of twenty-first century teenagers. In the UK, where compulsory introductory courses for students from other disciplines are less common, this problem may well be less acute. After all, in theory all UK philosophy undergraduates have opted to be so due to at least some passing interest in the subject. If there is any pedagogical issue to be addressed here, it is simply that of finding how to relate students’ preconceptions about philosophy as a subject (i.e. why they chose to study it) with the academic conception of the subject (i.e. what a typical department teaches). All that is needed, then, is a little staff-student dialogue. Staff need to find out why students choose to study philosophy and then use this knowledge to help them orientate (but not water-down) their courses.

f) Student Writing

The material in this final category probably has the widest significance for philosophy teaching in the UK. This material is concerned with the quality of student writing and how one might improve it17.

Indeed, by far the best article that I have read out of the 129 is devoted to this subject. It is also, perhaps tellingly, one of the few articles written by a philosopher with whose name I was already familiar: Jonathan Bennett18. This beautifully crafted essay is full of modest yet useful advice that I would recommend to both teachers and students of philosophy. It is packed with that special sort of ‘common sense’ that, while many might acknowledge as obvious, fewer manage to follow in their own practice. For instance, Bennett and his co-author Gorovitz suggest the following: do not use formal notation unless absolutely necessary; avoid abbreviations and acronyms; overcome the need to refer forwards in a paper by reordering the material; give clear and charitable accounts of other philosophers’ ideas; produce abstracts of your work, even if you are not required to do so; use subheadings and breaks in the text, but do so carefully. This is the sort of practical advice that students need. But well-meant advice is not enough on its own. What they really need is some sort of training in writing and editing their own work.

One method that has been suggested in three different articles is peer review of preliminary essay drafts19. Students rarely revise their own work before submission, often leaving it until the last minute. These three authors all suggest the following approach: ask students to bring in a first draft of their essays to a seminar approximately one week before the deadline. Split the students into pairs and have them read each other’s work. The authors vary as to the precise form that this exercise might take. Students could focus upon the clarity of the work they read or the substance of the arguments. It has also been suggested that students bring a second copy of their first draft and submit this to the teacher for comparison with the final version. This sort of approach has a number of benefits: students are forced to start work well before the final deadline; they receive critical feedback; their work is proofread for them; they get to read some of their contemporaries work and compare it with their own. Perhaps most importantly of all, teachers are likely to receive significantly better final work to read without the time-consuming task of marking each essay twice themselves (a prospect simply impractical for many). Although I have not had the opportunity to experiment with this approach myself yet, I do think that it is worth considering. It is a simple and reportedly effective way to help students improve their written work.

III. Future Directions

Much of the existing scholarship betrays its US origins. In the UK one does not generally have to offer a complete introduction to philosophy in a single course to a large audience, many of whose members have enrolled only in order to fulfil a humanities requirement. Many of the problems that figure in the existing American scholarship reflect the particular pressures that face its authors.

There is, then, a need for further scholarship devoted to the teaching of philosophy that reflects the peculiarities of the British system and the specific needs of students studying in UK higher education. In what follows I shall focus upon what I take to be some important general issues for future work to address. It would be impracticable here to catalogue all of the various specialist issues (in, for example, logic, history of philosophy, ethics, or philosophy of religion) that deserve further attention. I leave that to experts in the respective areas.

a) Metaphilosophical Questions

One thing that is noticeable by its absence in the existing scholarship is theoretical reflection concerning the teaching of philosophy. The majority of articles that I have read centre around a narrative account of personal experiences in the classroom of the form ‘last year I experimented by doing x and the students seemed to enjoy it’. But there is little abstract thought about, say, different philosophical methods, or the significance of metaphilosophy for questions concerning how best to teach philosophy. I suggest that metaphilosophical questions should always be in the background of any pedagogical research. For how can one determine how best to teach philosophy if one does not first decide what philosophy is? And as we all know, philosophers are not always quick to agree about what they think philosophy is or what it is supposed to achieve. Obviously there are no straightforward answers to such questions but one would at least expect philosophers (of all people) to be sensitive to such concerns. At the very least one might expect each philosopher to be able to give some sort of account of what it is that they think they are doing under the label ‘philosophy’, and so what it is that they claim to be teaching.

Perhaps such comments are unfair. Perhaps pedagogical research should concern itself with more down to earth matters, such as how to encourage timid students to contribute to seminar discussions, or how to support students who see formal logic as a repetition of the algebra classes at school that they hated. Perhaps. Such practical matters should no doubt form part of future scholarship devoted to philosophy teaching. But more abstract consideration of the nature of the task at hand seems equally appropriate and its absence is somewhat surprising.

b) Different Teaching Methods

In much of the existing literature there appears to be an assumption that there exists one generally preferred teaching method for philosophy: ‘the Socratic method’. This method has been expertly defined in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy:

The question-and-answer method of philosophizing (dialectic) used by Socrates in Plato’s early dialogues (e.g. Euthyphro), often in conjunction with pretended ignorance (Socratic irony), whereby a self-professed expert’s over-confident claim to knowledge is subverted. 20

Brickhouse and Smith, commenting upon popular references to Socratic method, add that:

The questions he [Socrates] asks, are, moreover, always “leading” questions; we never see Socrates asking questions when he does not at least appear to have some answer already in mind.21

Much of the existing scholarship simply assumes that this is the best way to teach philosophy. Occasionally this methodological issue is addressed directly. In particular, it has been argued that the teacher of philosophy should not make explicit his or her own philosophical beliefs when teaching a course on, say, ethics22. If the teacher states in class that he or she can see no good reason why abortion should be banned, this might discourage students from exploring the issue for themselves. Some students might take such a statement to be a definitive pronouncement and bow to the teacher’s superior wisdom, enshrined as it is by the authority conferred on the teacher by his or her academic position. Other students, less naïve and more pragmatic, might decide not to risk arguing against the teacher’s publicly proclaimed views in case they are marked down for their disagreement. Or they might simply assume that if they do not agree with the teacher then they—the young and inexperienced students—have missed something important in the debate.

So, for all of these pedagogical reasons, it has been suggested that teachers should not make known their own philosophical beliefs. Instead, they should adopt the ‘Socratic method’ in which the teacher gently encourages his or her students, guiding them through a question and answer discussion until, by their own means, they come to a conclusion that the teacher has already reached. By using this method, it is argued, students are introduced to arguments both for and against a particular issue and are encouraged to explore those arguments for themselves, examining their relative merits. An intellectual space is created, so to speak, in which students can explore their own thoughts on a philosophical topic without being forced to frame those thoughts with reference to the opinions of the teacher. Students learn how to do philosophy, and not what the teacher happens to think about the issue under discussion.

This sounds all very well but I have a number of concerns about this approach to teaching philosophy:

1. Philosophers have opinions about philosophical issues. Many of these opinions are passionately held and vigorously defended. There is something disingenuous about pretending to one’s students that one’s own philosophical beliefs do not exist or are, in some sense, irrelevant to the discussion. If a teacher has strong arguments for or against a particular philosophical position then why should he or she not share them?

2. There is no such thing as impartiality, especially when one is dealing with academic philosophers. If a teacher of philosophy has a strongly held opinion on a particular issue then that will inevitably influence how he or she discusses that issue in class. Perhaps some opposing arguments will be overlooked; perhaps others will be dismissed without a fair hearing. No matter how impartial the teacher tries to be, his or her beliefs on a particular topic are bound to affect the way in which that topic is taught. Surely, it is better to be honest and open about those beliefs. Students have a far better chance of compensating for any bias when it is explicitly stated than they do when it remains hidden.

3. If the teacher of philosophy does not express an opinion on a topic under discussion then the students might think that the question is not especially important, that the teacher has no opinions, or that no particular opinion is better than any other. The lack of explicit commitment over the issue may lead students to devalue both the issues under discussion and the intellectual credentials of their teacher. If the teacher does not appear to care about whether, say, belief in God is justifiable or not, why should the students?

These potential problems with ‘Socratic method’ are rarely addressed in the existing literature and this is an area where further work may be especially useful. It is often assumed that the ‘Socratic method’ is simply the method for teaching philosophy. But this is merely an assumption. In the light of the problems that I have outlined, I suggest an alternative to the Socratic method. This is quite straightforward: the teacher of philosophy should put forward in class his or her own considered belief concerning the philosophical issue under discussion, supporting it with those arguments that have convinced them that this is the most reasonable position to take on the subject23. If, for instance, the topic under discussion in a practical ethics class is abortion, then the teacher should make clear his or her own position with regard to this subject, and should say why he or she finds this position the most plausible one to adopt. By doing this, students will know precisely what the teacher believes, what the teacher thinks counts as a reasonable argument with regard to this topic, and how one might construct an argument for or against a particular position.

Now, proponents of the Socratic method might immediately object that this might intimidate new students who will lack the confidence to question the bold assertions of their teachers, let alone to challenge them in class. Yet what is important is that the teacher does not claim that this is the end of the matter. If one proclaims one’s own opinions in class, along with the reasons why one holds those opinions, then there is no reason why this should preclude any further debate. So long as the teacher makes it clear that other arguments may be advanced for opposing positions (and perhaps directs students to literature advancing such positions), then why should he or she not be open with the class about his or her own philosophical beliefs? Indeed, the challenge for the students then becomes to find objections to the teacher’s position, to try to convince the teacher to change his or her mind—in other words, to engage in serious philosophical debate.

The problems that proponents of the Socratic method claim to find with this alternative approach are really only the problems associated with poor, closed-minded, teachers. Such teachers would no doubt be equally poor using other methods, including the Socratic method. Any teacher of philosophy who enjoys open philosophical debate and respects the force of good arguments should be able to express his or her own opinions in class without closing off further debate. “I believe that it is acceptable to kill other human beings whenever they threaten to diminish my own well being. Convince me otherwise.” Why should the teacher not open a course on ethics with such a statement if he or she actually believes it? If a teacher begins with the assumption that all of their beliefs are correct and that their students will never be able to convince them otherwise, then that teacher should not be teaching philosophy, whatever method they might choose to employ.

As for intimidation, I suggest that this is often a product of a teacher’s temperament rather than the method by which they teach25. This is obviously an issue to which teachers of philosophy should be sensitive, but there is no necessary connection between teachers openly expressing their philosophical beliefs in class and students being intimidated by those teachers, so long as it is made clear that students are encouraged to challenge those beliefs. One should also note that if the method that I outline here were adopted by a number of teachers in the same department then students would soon be exposed to the invariably opposing beliefs of the various members of faculty. And if students are faced with contradictory claims made by two or more figures invested with institutional authority, then it should not take them too long to realise that not all of them can be correct26.

Of course, the method that I outline here does share something important in common with the Socratic method, namely that it is teaching by discussion rather than by lecture. Some may understand the phrase ‘Socratic method’ as just this, namely philosophy as open debate rather than scholastic learning or dogmatic preaching. Obviously I have no objection to open philosophical debate. But I do have some reservations about dishonesty in philosophical debate. In other words, I object to what has come to be known as ‘Socratic irony’. For a discussion to be truly open, everyone needs to make plain their own position and their own arguments in favour of that position. Students will only learn to engage in such open philosophical debate if they have the opportunity to experience it in class. For that to happen, the teacher must be open about his or her own philosophical beliefs.

I have tried to outline some objections to what has come to be known as Socratic method and have sketched an alternative approach. These are obviously only preliminary contributions to what I suggest is needed, namely an explicit examination of those assumptions that many philosophers appear to share (in the existing scholarship, at least) about teaching methods in philosophy.

c) Training Graduate Teaching Assistants

In Bennett and Gorovitz’s excellent article already mentioned above, the authors draw attention to the fact that graduate teaching assistants rarely receive any detailed training before being thrown in at the deep end. In the UK it is increasingly common for institutions to offer short training programmes for teaching assistants. However these are usually generic and so brief that they are unable to offer any substantial guidance. One gets the impression that these courses are designed solely to meet certain bureaucratic ‘teaching quality’ requirements than actually to help those who are required to attend them.

Bennett and Gorovitz’s remarks relate primarily to marking essays. Martin Benjamin has outlined a more substantial programme for training philosophy teaching assistants, designed as a term long seminar course addressing a series of pedagogical topics in some detail28. The format of Benjamin’s course is highly appropriate, namely seminars based around discussions of existing articles (primarily in Teaching Philosophy), a format already well familiar to the typical philosophy graduate student. Although a term long course may be impracticable for many departments, it may be possible to digest Benjamin’s course into an intensive session over a few days. This is perhaps where the PRS-LTSN may be able to help, by organising short courses for graduate teaching assistants from a number of different departments. It goes without saying that such training is an excellent investment for the future, as at least some of today’s teaching assistants will become tomorrow’s lecturers.

d) Teaching Students to Write Well

Philosophers have tended to view with suspicion a concern with ‘style’ instead of ‘content’ ever since Plato, even though Plato himself was a master of written language. It is perhaps now time to acknowledge in our teaching practice that such an attitude is unhelpful. Instead we should perhaps turn to John of Salisbury who argued in his pedagogical treatise the Metalogicon that the study of both rhetoric and logic is essential to a philosophical education. In response to those who claim that philosophy ‘is concerned not with words, but with facts’, John argues that the art of eloquence is vital if one is to express such facts clearly29. Here he follows another ancient philosopher: Cicero. According to Cicero, the sharp division between philosophy and eloquence dates to (Plato’s) Socrates30. Although Cicero acknowledges that ‘wisdom lacking power of expression’ is preferable to ‘talkative folly’, he doubts the value of the ‘tongue-tied silence of the man who knows the facts but cannot explain them in language’31. Instead he holds up the ideal of the ‘eloquent philosopher’, one who is identical to the ‘wise orator’. One might say that one skill without the other is of little value. However, one could go further and suggest that thinking clearly and writing clearly cannot really be divorced from one another.

I would argue that teaching students how to write well is one of the most important pedagogical issues for philosophy. It is surprising how little attention is paid to the skill of writing well in philosophy departments, not only given the fact that this is the medium by which students are assessed, but also given the central place that language has occupied in twentieth century philosophy (both ‘Analytic’ and ‘Continental’). If a student’s ability to argue philosophically is judged via their ability to write philosophy, then the task of teaching them to argue well is, for all practical purposes, the same as the task of teaching them to write well. Moreover, the ability to write well is one of the most important transferable skills that a philosophy student has the opportunity to gain from his or her degree. An outsider might well expect philosophy graduates to have a more sophisticated command of the English language than other graduates, being able to manipulate abstract concepts and to make complex arguments32. But they will only do so if this skill is taught. Videos, multimedia presentations, role-playing; these are all very well but the mark of a decent philosophical education is the ability to argue well. And such arguments do not exist in the ether, so to speak; they are expressed in language and, in particular, in written language. Indeed, it is by written language that students are assessed at the end of their degrees, whether it be in examinations or via course work.

In the light of my own experience as an undergraduate student, a graduate student, and a teacher, I would suggest that teaching students how to write well should be every philosophy teacher’s highest priority. Determining how best to achieve this should become the most important issue for those concerned with philosophy pedagogy. How many times has one heard the phrase ‘s/he is a very able student but they let themselves down on paper’. But such students do not let themselves down; we let them down by not teaching them how to argue effectively in their written work. No doubt many academic philosophers will acknowledge that their task as teachers of philosophy is not to transmit a body of knowledge but rather to develop certain critical skills. I suggest that ‘writing’ should be included among those skills.

IV. In Conclusion

After reading well over 2000 pages of scholarship concerned with teaching philosophy I have come to the following conclusions. If one defines philosophy as a critical analysis of one’s existing opinions and the attempt to replace those opinions with rationally ground beliefs, then teaching philosophy should involve teaching the skills necessary to accomplish this33. A successful philosophical education, then, will be one at the end of which one’s students are able to call into question their own unexamined presuppositions and to think rationally for themselves. These are at least my own conceptions of philosophy and the function of a philosophical education34. The question, then, becomes this: how does the teacher of philosophy develop the necessary skills in order to achieve this in his or her students? As I have already noted, rational thought is assessed by rational output, so to speak. Success is measured by a student’s ability to argue rationally in an essay or to complete correctly a logic exercise. So, the practical question is this: how can the teacher of philosophy train his or her students to produce coherently argued essays? I contend that many of the pedagogical techniques that crop up in the existing literature—computer programs, role-playing, videos, novels, and so on—are all of limited value. What is necessary is that students are taught to write well. What we need are books with titles such as ‘how to write a philosophy essay’ and first year philosophy courses in which learning how to write well is a central objective35. One or two paragraphs at the end of a course handbook simply will not do.

In sum, then, we need to go back to basics. We need to focus upon those student skills that some may complain should have been mastered at school. We need to make a realistic assessment of the skills that students already have and pay attention to those that require further development. We need to acknowledge that teaching students how to construct a decent paragraph is not a remedial activity that, in an ideal world, should not be necessary. Rather, it is an essential part of any training designed to teach students how to argue clearly and effectively. If our aim is to teach students how to think then we must accept that it will also be our task to teach them how to write.

Endnotes

  1. I have read and reviewed, among other things, the entire contents of volumes 8, 12, 13, 16, 20, and 23 of Teaching Philosophy. In due course all of these reviews will be available on-line at ‘www.prs-ltsn.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/reviews/articles/’. I have not attempted to take into account the work of my co-reviewers, Annamaria Carusi and Richard Hamilton, whose reviews may be found at the same URL.
  2. Examples include Jon N. Torgerson, “Why I Teach Philosophy”, Teaching Philosophy, 13 (1990), 3-11; Joel Marks, “Teaching Philosophy, Being a Philosopher”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 99-104; Ladelle McWhorter, “Can a Postmodern Philosopher Teach Modern Philosophy?”, Teaching Philosophy, 23 (2000), 1-13; Robert C. Solomon, “What is Called Thinking? Teaching the Joy of Philosophy”, Teaching Philosophy, 24 (2001), 205-18.
  3. See Alice Ambrose, “Moore and Wittgenstein as Teachers”, Teaching Philosophy, 12 (1989), 107-13.
  4. See e.g. Joseph S. Ellin, “Confidentiality in the Teaching of Medical Ethics: A Case Report”, Teaching Philosophy, 8 (1985), 1-12; Joseph D. Allegretti & Charles J. Dougherty,“Teaching Ethics in Law School”, Teaching Philosophy, 8 (1985), 13-25; David R. Hiley & William G. Layton, “Team-Teaching with the Corporate Executive”, Teaching Philosophy, 8 (1985), 27-31; Michael Yeo, “Primum Non Nocere: The Ethics of Teaching Medical Ethics”, Teaching Philosophy, 12 (1989), 23-34; Michael Davis, “Who Can Teach Workplace Ethics?”, Teaching Philosophy, 13 (1990), 21-38; Morton Winston, “Ethics Committee Simulations”, Teaching Philosophy, 13 (1990), 127-40; Ellen R. Klein, “From Classroom to Boardroom: Teaching Practical Ethics Outside the Academy”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 123-30; Michael Davis, “Developing and Using Cases to Teach Practical Ethics”, Teaching Philosophy, 20 (1997), 353-85; Michael C. Loui, “Fieldwork and Cooperative Learning in Professional Ethics”, Teaching Philosophy, 23 (2000), 139-56; Heather J. Gert, “Two Ways to Teach Premedical Students the Ethical Value of Discussion and Information Gathering”, Teaching Philosophy, 24 (2001), 233-40.
  5. See Michael Davis, “Who Can Teach Workplace Ethics?”, Teaching Philosophy, 13 (1990), 21-38. Note also the same author’s “Ethics Across the Curriculum: Teaching Professional Responsibility in Teaching Courses”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 205-35.
  6. See Joseph D. Allegretti & Charles J. Dougherty, “Teaching Ethics in Law School”, Teaching Philosophy, 8 (1985), 13-25.
  7. There are, of course, other ways in which one might introduce philosophy to, say, law students. In my review of Allegretti & Dougherty I suggest that rather than teach ‘professional ethics’ it might be more interesting and productive to teach ‘philosophy of law’, i.e. philosophical reflection on the nature of justice, the foundations of legal authority, and the like. This would give law students a chance to engage in serious philosophical discussion about their subject.
  8. See e.g. Wayne Grennan, “Testing Syllogisms with Venn-Equivalent Truth-Table Methods”, Teaching Philosophy, 8 (1985), 237-39; Robert L. Armstrong & Lawrence W. Howe, “A Euler Test for Syllogisms”, Teaching Philosophy, 13 (1990), 39-46; Mike Donn, “Help in Finding Missing Premises”, Teaching Philosophy, 13 (1990), 159-64; Mark T. Nelson, “Promises and Material Conditionals”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 155-56; Howard Pospesel, “The Method of Propositional Analogues”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 157-63; Donald Wayne Viney, “Logic Crystallized”, Teaching Philosophy, 20 (1997), 143-54; Morgan Forbes, “Peirce’s Existential Graphs: A Practical Alternative to Truth Tables for Critical Thinkers”, Teaching Philosophy, 20 (1997), 387-400; Marvin J. Croy, “Problem Solving, Working Backwards, and Graphic Proof Representation”, Teaching Philosophy, 23 (2000), 169-87; Leigh S. Cauman, “On Conditional Proof in Elementary Logic”, Teaching Philosophy, 23 (2000), 353-57; David Socher, “The Textbook Case of Affirming the Consequent”, Teaching Philosophy, 24 (2001), 241-51.
  9. See e.g. Ofelia Schutte, “Overcoming Ethnocentrism in the Philosophy Classroom”, Teaching Philosophy, 8 (1985), 137-44; Phyllis Woloshin, “Text Selection and Moral Obligation”, Teaching Philosophy, 8 (1985), 221-27 ; John Immerwahr, “Incorporating Gender Issues in Modern Philosophy Courses”, Teaching Philosophy, 13 (1990), 241-52; John Immerwahr & Michael Burke, “Race and the Modern Philosophy Course”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 21-34; Olufemi Taiwo, “On Diversifying the Philosophy Curriculum”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 287-99; Valerie Broin, “Integrating Critical Analysis: Philosophy with Multicultural and Gender Focus”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 301-14; Kayley Vernallis, “Pearls of Wisdom: An Exercise in Promoting Multicultural Understanding and Philosophical Engagement”, Teaching Philosophy, 23 (2000), 43-51.
  10. See John Immerwahr, “Incorporating Gender Issues in Modern Philosophy Courses”, Teaching Philosophy, 13 (1990), p. 241.
  11. One impressive work that deserves note is Seyyed Hossein Nasr & Oliver Leaman, eds, History of Islamic Philosophy, Routledge History of World Philosophies 1 (London: Routledge, 1996), with a paperback edition issued in 2001.
  12. See e.g. Derek Harrison, “Keeping it Alive”, Teaching Philosophy, 8 (1985), 201-06; Daniel Cohen, “Putting Paradoxes to Pedagogical Use in Philosophy”, Teaching Philosophy, 8 (1985), 309-17; Patrick McKee, “Philosophy and Wisdom”, Teaching Philosophy,13 (1990), 325-30; Larry S. Bowlden, “‘They Read Novels, Don’t They?’ Using Novels in Teaching Philosophy”, Teaching Philosophy, 13 (1990), 359-64; William B. Irvine, “Teaching Without Books”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 35-46; Eugene V. Torisky Jr., “Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun: Literature in the Philosophy Classroom”, Teaching Philosophy, 23 (2000), 255-68.
  13. This is quite distinct, however, from the suggestion that philosophy departments should offer tailored courses to students in other departments, such as ‘philosophy of biology’ for biology students, for instance.
  14. For more on compulsory humanities courses see my review of Jane Freimiller, “The One Page Philosopher: Short Writing Assignments for Introductory Classes”, Teaching Philosophy, 20 (1997), 269-76, forthcoming at ‘www.prs-ltsn.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/reviews/articles/’.
  15. Beyond the articles discussed below, note also Stephen Fishman, “Writing and Philosophy”, Teaching Philosophy, 12 (1989), 361-74; Gerald J. Erion, “Thinking Critically about College Writing: The Analogy between Arguments and Essays”, Teaching Philosophy, 23 (2000), 53-61.
  16. See Jonathan Bennett & Samuel Gorovitz, “Improving Academic Writing”, Teaching Philosophy, 20 (1997), 105-20.
  17. See Stanley J. Werne, “Taking Rough Drafts Seriously”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 47-57; Jeffrey K. McDonough, “Rough Drafts without Tears: A Guide to a Manageable Procedure for Improving Student Writing”, Teaching Philosophy, 23 (2000), 127-37; Juli Eflin, “Improving Student Papers in ‘Introduction to Philosophy’ Courses”, in T. Kasachkoff, ed., In the Socratic Tradition: Essays on Teaching Philosophy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), pp. 47-53.
  18. Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 837. This particular entry is by Andrew Belsey.
  19. Thomas C. Brickhouse & Nicholas D. Smith, Plato’s Socrates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 3. As it happens, I doubt that this is what the historical Socrates did. I take Socrates’ professions of ignorance in the early Platonic dialogues to be genuine and so do not believe that Socrates himself ever engaged in what has come to be known as ‘Socratic method’. Indeed, Brickhouse and Smith have come to the same conclusion (see ibid.). However, that is not my primary concern here.
  20. See Mike W. Martin, “Advocating Values: Professionalism in Teaching Ethics”, Teaching Philosophy, 20 (1997), 19-34. Note also Joel Marks, “Teaching Philosophy, Being a Philosopher”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 99-104, esp. p. 100.
  21. Here I am in agreement with Hugh Wilder (cited in Martin, ibid., p. 22) whose own method involves “explicitly stating to the student that I believe his or her claim is false, explaining why I believe it is false, arguing with the student about its truth value, and finally giving a low grade if necessary”. Martin dismisses such an approach as “coercion”. On the contrary, it sounds to me like an excellent example of serious philosophical engagement with one’s students.
  22. For an account of the use of provocative philosophical claims as foundations for classroom discussions see William B. Irvine, “Teaching Without Books”, Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), 35-46, esp. pp. 40-41. Irvine’s approach is to make deliberately provocative statements such as ‘I defend cannibalism’ rather than to make an open declaration of personal philosophical beliefs. Yet I imagine that the average academic philosopher will have a number of genuine beliefs that an audience of philosophical apprentices might find quite unsettling.
  23. However cultural differences may also be an issue here, especially when dealing with overseas students.
  24. This last point derives from a conversation with Michael Eardley. Faced with such a situation some students may become confused or unsure of the situation and so may require support.
  25. See Jonathan Bennett & Samuel Gorovitz, “Improving Academic Writing”, Teaching Philosophy, 20 (1997), esp. p. 117.
  26. See Martin Benjamin, “A Seminar on Teaching Philosophy”, in T. Kasachkoff, ed., In the Socratic Tradition: Essays on Teaching Philosophy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), pp. 259-68.
  27. See Daniel D. McGarry, The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), esp. pp. 24-27.
  28. See Cicero De Oratore, esp. 3.56-61, 3.69-73, 3.140-143.
  29. CiceroDe Oratore 3.142, following the Loeb Classical Library translation by H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942).
  30. Obviously graduates of other disciplines will also be able to do these things, but insofar as philosophy is a subject primarily devoted to the analysis of complex arguments it would not be unreasonable to suppose that a philosophy graduate would be especially skilled in presenting such arguments in both written and verbal language.
  31. I have no intention to draw any technical distinction between ‘opinion’ and ‘belief’ here. The only distinction I want to make is between unexamined and examined opinions or beliefs.
  32. No doubt there are other conceptions that may be equally plausible.
  33. In the past I have recommended to students Thomas S. Kane, The New Oxford Guide to Writing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) as a good ‘back to basics’ introduction to essay writing. What are needed, I suggest, are introductory philosophy courses in which a book such as this is actually assigned as a textbook alongside more the typical fare and in which students are examined on their writing skills alongside their grasp of the philosophical content of the course.

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