A couple of years ago the philosophy program, such as it is, at my college moved from the Department of Psychology and Philosophy to the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies, with philosophy and art being the humanistic studies in question. There is now some very hypothetical talk about moving it back or perhaps somewhere else entirely. Which raises the question of where it belongs.
A related question is what a philosophy program ought to be. Should philosophy be treated just like any other subject, with its own department and its own major, for instance? Or should it somehow be integrated with one or more other subjects? My undergraduate degree was in philosophy, politics, and economics, and studying philosophy on its own was not an option. I think there's something to be said for that, although in the US system nobody ever studies just one subject, so perhaps the point is moot.
Another thing that struck me recently (last Tuesday, to be precise) was that in one day I went to a talk by a leadership instructor that was all about the importance of ethics for leadership (and specifically, in his opinion, the ethics of Aristotle, Augustine, Gandhi, and Confucius, with particular emphasis on Aristotle), I attended another talk by a psychology professor that referred to the work of Thomas Kuhn, and I heard that a rhetoric professor teaches a course that includes Kuhn's work. In other words, lots of people seem to think that philosophical ideas are important. But far fewer people seem to think that philosophy is important, that, for instance, if you are going to study leadership or psychology then you ought to study some philosophy. We don't, for instance, offer any philosophy courses at my college that deal with Kuhn. There is something odd about this situation. And we are far from being the only college at which the study of philosophy is not flourishing.
Why people would pay so much lip service to the idea that philosophy matters while acting as if it doesn't is one question. (And answers might vary from its being different people who value philosophy, on the one hand, and who make decisions about what gets taught, on the other, to its being thought that philosophy isn't that hard and so you can understand (or teach) Kuhn or Aristotle without studying any other philosophy first.) My interest now is more in what the point of philosophy is as part of a college curriculum. If we can see its point then perhaps we can see its place.
One reason for teaching philosophy is to teach a kind of cultural literacy. If your other courses are going to refer to philosophers and their ideas then it would be good to have some background in these ideas, even if only of the bluffer's or dummies' guide variety.
Another reason would be to encourage more reflective thinking about whatever else you are studying. At my high school if you were applying to Oxford or Cambridge you were taught some philosophy of whatever you planned to study at university, as well as some general philosophy. I think it would be good for every history major to take a course in the philosophy of history, every science major to take a course on philosophy of science, and so on. Something like this happens now in some majors, but the courses tend to be in the history of ideas, and to be taught by non-philosophers. This does not, I think, encourage any real thought about what the subject is now or what (perhaps worth challenging) assumptions underlie it.
Then there's logic and critical thinking. I'm never sure whether taking a course on these things actually improves anyone's thinking (rather than simply rewarding those who are already logical), but it might help. There is supposedly evidence that mapping arguments improves critical thinking, but of course improving scores on tests designed to assess critical thinking is not necessarily the same thing. How critically you think during and in relation to a test might not match how you think in other situations. But it seems like something.
And then (lastly?) there's ethics, understood very broadly. Should we be religious, and if so, what kind of religion makes most sense? That is, what is religion?, is it a good thing?, and is it better to be a Thomist or a Kierkegaardian or a Buddhist or an atheist or what? What political theory makes the most sense? What values are at stake in contemporary debates about euthanasia, same-sex marriage, drug legalization, and so on? How should we rank these values or, if we don't rank them, how should we decide what to do about these and other things?
All this suggests that a healthy philosophy program would offer at least a couple of survey courses in the history of philosophy, several philosophy of fill-in-the-discipline-here, at least one logic or critical thinking course (at least if the evidence that these improve thinking stands up), and several ethics/religion/politics courses. And I'd be inclined to require at least two philosophy courses for every student. Engineers might take critical thinking and engineering ethics, say. Economists might take political philosophy and philosophy of science (or of social science).
I would think if all these courses were required and regularly offered then a stand-alone philosophy department would be needed. And it might as well offer a minor. Whether it should offer a major is not so clear to me, but a kind of minimal major, one that could easily be combined with a second major, might be a very good thing.
never really could buy into the idea that there is a thing/field that is Philosophy so I think 'it' could and perhaps should be taught in relation to another discipline as the topic/subject fits, as say an aspect of working in psychology, or painting or such.
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly an odd field. It might make sense to have, say, one philosopher in each department teaching the philosophy of ______. But then you would have multiple variations on philosophy of history, for example, being taught and no ethics (except some things like business ethics) or logic (with the possible exception of mathematical logic in a math department). Which would be weird. I agree, though, that having philosophy separate from every other department is also sort of weird. Philosophy seems to belong everywhere and nowhere.
Deletenot sure there should be such a stand-alone thing as "ethics" to teach people, better I think (in the rough style say of European modes of philosophy of science and such) have a deeper integration into questioning/thinking-through all aspects of some field like business or law.
Deletecan't people communicate with each other without being in the same formal dept?
The problem is: where do you get your embedded ethics specialists from? They will inevitably have to know about Kant, Hume, Bentham, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle, Sartre, Derrida, etc, etc. Where does one go to learn about such people? Oh yes! A philosophy department.
DeleteOne reason to teach ethics is that students seem to be taught a lot of crude utilitarianism and relativism, for example, by non-philosophers. It's good to counter this with something more sophisticated and better informed. There's also the fact that thinking through all aspects of, say, business or law will involve ethical aspects, and then you have Philip's point. And the fact that a lot of political issues (perhaps even all of them) involve ethics. It would be nice to have at least part of the electorate have a better understanding of these issues than you can get from newspapers. There's also the whole question of how to live, leaving politics aside. Not that a course will give you the answer, but it might give you tools to help you answer it for yourself.
DeleteI guess we just differ on how useful those thinkers/fields are in terms of working on actual solutions vs some sense maybe of a kind of historical awareness or such. As someone who has done work in medical and organizational ethics I gotta say there isn't much to the academic canons that pays off. More useful often are some areas in phenomenology, pragmatism, which don't get into 'oughts' or 'rights' and so on.
DeleteYes, depends what you count as useful I suppose. I've met a lot of pro-life people who would probably think ethics with lots of 'oughts' might be very useful, although they might prefer Aquinas to Kant. In terms of making sense of other people's beliefs and concerns I think it helps to know the general terrain, and people like Aristotle and Aquinas are useful for that. Nietzsche probably not so much, even if his ideas generally are worth thinking about. But the more ways of thinking about ethics you have carefully thought through and understood, the better your chances of understanding where someone else is coming from and what might be acceptable to them. Of course whether that's actually what you ought to do is another matter. Philosophy will never tell you what to do, in my opinion. But it seems fairly common for people to have what might be called degenerate (crude, slightly incorrect) Thomist or relativist or whatever beliefs. And I think knowing the more sophisticated originals can be helpful. I might be thinking about historical awareness rather than working on actual solutions though. There is also the question of making sense of your own beliefs, which seems worthwhile, and again, knowing some decent options should help with this. One reason for being the kind of pragmatist who is more or less utilitarian, after all, is thinking that rival theories are all worse. And to make that judgment you have to know the rival theories.
DeleteThese things tend to go in cycles. The year after I graduated they closed the philosophy department at my uni and instead attached philosophers to a few other departments where they thought it would be useful. But of course the philosophers all needed to talk to each other, since their fields of expertise tended to overlap, and after a few years someone had a bright idea: hey! let's gather all the philosophers together into their own department!
ReplyDeleteI think the trouble is that philosophy doesn't have its own subject matter in the sense that, say, physics does. It feeds off problems of a certain sort that arise in other areas. At the same time, however, dealing with those problems does not (typically) lead to a direct advancement in the area under discussion. Often the best result is not any new discovery but stopping people wasting their time by going on wild goose-chases.
So in that sense it's tempting to disperse philosophers rather than concentrate them in a department. Unfortunately, however, philosophical problems have an annoying habit of bleeding into each other. You start with some problem in Neuroscience, which leads to questions of determinism, theories about the self, questions about the nature of reality, epistemology, language, ethics and so on. And it is in this sense that philosophy forms a coherent whole and seems to deserve its own department.
So whichever route you choose you're likely to be haunted by the suspicion that you've made the wrong choice.
I hope this is helpful.
Thanks, yes, that sounds right. I think what might make most sense would be to have a philosophy department whose members worked closely with other departments, perhaps even having joint appointments in some cases. Whether other people would want to listen to the philosophers, and vice versa, is another matter. Would neuroscientists want to have a Peter Hacker around telling them they were getting things all wrong? Would Hacker want to listen to their self-defence? Maybe not, but if done well I think that kind of dialogue could be constructive.
DeleteIt could be, but it's a tough sell. The Hacker-esque Wittgensteinian approach tends to seem disappointingly bathetic to most scientists - and quite a few philosophers as well. The prospect of a heroic breakthrough held out by something like the "hard" problem is far more attractive.
DeleteA Quinean, or neo-Quinean, approach linking of philosophy and science into one seamless enterprise might be philosophically questionable, but as a PR/funding strategy it's been brilliantly successful.
Yes, an actual Hacker might not be ideal. Maxwell Bennett seems to like him, and I imagine has learned from him, but others might not. But haven't there been scientists who were inspired by Popper's work, and wasn't philosophy closely connected with science (especially physics) in the early 20th century? I think that's the case. Which suggests that philosophers and scientists working together can be a good thing.
DeleteIt's one thing, though, I suppose, for an Einstein or a Popper to contribute to a dialogue and another for the local physicist or philosopher of science at some mid-level (or lower) college to hope to do the same. I still think it might be good for students to think at a meta level about what they are doing and being taught. Not so much because this might lead to better ways to do things but because it's good to understand what you are doing and why.
We've talked about this before, Duncan, but I think part of the problem in the US is that philosophy is almost entirely absent from the public school curriculum. Students may get a bit of political philosophy in AP Government, and there have been various ethics initiatives, but many college-bound students will have had no exposure. It's always struck me as odd that there is no AP Philosophy course.
ReplyDeleteYes, that might be a good idea. When I talk to my students about Locke's political philosophy sometimes they all say that they know about it, at least superficially, and sometimes they seem never to have heard of him. So I'm not sure what gets taught.
DeletePhilosophy is so associated with atheism (bizarrely) that it could be a tough sell in high school.