APA Newsletters NEWSLETTER on TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
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APA Newsletters NEWSLETTER ON TEACHING PHILOSOPHY Volume 09, Number 1 Fall 2009 FROM THE EDITORS, TZIPORAH KASACHKOFF & EUGENE KELLY ARTICLES RALPH H. JOHNSON AND J. ANTHONY BLAIR “Teaching the Dog’s Breakfast: Some Dangers and How to Deal with Them” J. AARON SIMMONS AND SCOTT F. AIKIN “Teaching Plato with Emoticons” RUSSELL W. DUMKE “Using Euthyphro 9e-11b to Teach Some Basic Logic and to Teach How to Read a Platonic Dialog” BOOK REVIEW Stephen Mulhall: Philosophical Myths of the Fall REVIEWED BY DANIEL GALLAGHER BOOKS RECEIVED ADDRESSES OF CONTRIBUTORS © 2009 by The American Philosophical Association APA NEWSLETTER ON Teaching Philosophy Tziporah Kasachkoff and Eugene Kelly, Co-Editors Fall 2009 Volume 09, Number 1 from the layout of a textbook he was assigned for a course in ROM THE DITORS philosophy. The text contains a chapter on logic that is followed F E by a chapter that discusses Plato’s and Aristotle’s notions of form, and includes, as a reading selection, Plato’s Euthyphro 9d-11b. Here Socrates and Euthyphro discuss the latter’s Tziporah Kasachkoff, The Graduate Center, CUNY definition of piety as what the gods all love. The passage may ([email protected]) be seen as an illustration of basic concepts in logic. Dumke’s paper offers an excellent analysis of this passage, using truth- Eugene Kelly, New York Institute of Technology functional operators to show the structure of Socrates’ analysis, ([email protected]) and a diamond-shaped diagram for exhibiting plastically the two men’s dispute about the definition. The author brings out Welcome to the fall 2009 edition of the APA Newsletter on via his analysis examples of possible circular reasoning and an Teaching Philosophy. We are pleased to present three papers informal fallacy. Students are shown where the chief difficulty of interest to teachers of philosophy. in Euthyphro’s definition is located, and why his definition fails The first paper, “Teaching the Dog’s Breakfast: Some to give Socrates the knowledge about piety that Euthyphro had Dangers and How to Deal with Them,” by Ralph H. Johnson promised to give him. Students also learn to appreciate the and J. Anthony Blair, both of the University of Windsor, begins distinction between an attribute and the nature of a concept. with a complaint about textbooks used in teaching informal We are also pleased to present a brief contribution by Felicia logic and critical thinking: they do not examine fully the Nimue Ackerman of Brown University entitled “Wa(i)ving Rights foundations of the field and distinguish the kinds of learning Away.” It concerns the option offered to students of obtaining processes that may be appropriately classified under these access to letters of recommendation written on their behalf, terms. The paper then presents such an analysis, distinguishing or of waiving their right to such access. This article originally between kinds of analytical skills that college students should appeared in The Providence Journal, which has given us the master, and noting how problematic some of them in fact are. permission to reprint it here. The authors distinguish the studies of logic, critical thinking, informal logic, problem-solving, decision-making, argument We have one review, Philosophical Myths of the Fall, by and argumentation, inference, and implication. The paper offers Stephen Mulhall, reviewed by Daniel Gallagher. suggestions for developing a first-year course that keeps these We always encourage our readers to suggest themselves distinctions in mind as it focuses upon those skills thought by as reviewers of books and other material that they think may the instructor to be most important. Since course development be especially good for classroom use. The names of the other requires the developer to be familiar with the relevant literature, books and materials we have for review are listed at the end a list of sources is included in the paper, along with an extensive of the Newsletter. Please remember again that our publication bibliography of specific works in the field. is devoted to pedagogy and not to theoretical discussions of Our second paper, “Teaching Plato with Emoticons,” is philosophical issues, and that aim should be borne in mind by J. Aaron Simmons of Hendrix College and Scott F. Aikin of when reviewing material for our publication. Western Kentucky University and Vanderbilt University. The As always, we encourage our readers to write for our authors maintain that students’ reading skills are shaped by publication. We welcome papers that respond, comment on, such technologies as the use of emoticons in communication. It or take issue with any of the material that appears within our may therefore be useful to include their skills as self-expression pages. via emoticons in exercises designed to increase their critical The following guidelines for submissions should be skill in philosophy. The paper describes one of the exercises followed: the authors have designed: a reading of Plato’s Euthyphro, in • The author’s name, the title of the paper, and full which students are required to add emoticons to “decode” the mailing address should appear on a separate sheet of drama of the text, and thereby demonstrate their understanding paper. Nothing that identifies the author or his or her of some of Plato’s technique of presenting arguments, and their institution should appear within the body or within the ability to interpret Plato’s thought. The article describes some footnotes/endnotes of the paper. The title of the paper of the pedagogical results they have obtained by this exercise, should appear on the top of the paper itself. and suggests some other texts to which this technique can be usefully applied. • Both electronic and paper copies of papers are acceptable. In the case of paper copies, we would The third paper, “Using Euthyphro 9e-11b to Teach Some appreciate receiving four copies for our review Basic Logic and to Teach How to Read a Platonic Dialog,” is by purposes. Russell W. Dumke of Our Lady of the Lake University. Professor Dumke tells us that he received the inspiration for this exercise — APA Newsletter, Fall 2009, Volume 09, Number 1 — • Authors should adhere to the production guidelines types, and (b) exhaust the argument types. These are at best that are available from the APA and that are available dubious claims, and all are contested in the literature. (This is from the APA’s website. not the place to defend this claim in detail. For a start, the reader • In the case of electronic copies, in writing your paper may consult Blair 2006.) to disk, please do not use your word processor’s Our objective in this paper is to suggest some clarifications, footnote or endnote function; all notes should be and to spell out their implications for how such a course should added manually at the end of the paper. be conceived and structured. By the way, the textbook authors • All articles submitted to the Newsletter are blind- may not be the principal culprits. The publishing companies reviewed by the members of the editorial committee. want these texts to be all things to all people so as to maximize sales, and they pressure authors to include a wide range of They are: material, as we know from personal experience and anecdotal Tziporah Kasachkoff, The Graduate Center, CUNY reports from colleagues. ([email protected]), co-editor Eugene Kelly, New York Institute of Technology 2. Some essential distinctions ([email protected]), co-editor One of the most hopeful developments in the 1970s was the David Martens University of the Witwatersrand emergence of what some have called the “thinking skills movement,” which had as its aim to install the teaching ([email protected]) of thinking skills into their rightful place in education at all Andrew Wengraf, Brooklyn College (ret.) levels. This movement led to the development of a number of ([email protected]) initiatives, some of which targeted critical thinking (e.g., Richard Robert Basil Talisse, Vanderbilt University Paul’s Sonoma State University annual conferences, begun in 1981); others, problem-solving (Rubenstein 1975); others, ([email protected]) decision-making; others still, lateral thinking (DeBono 1967). This plurality of initiatives prompted educational psychologist Contributions should be sent to: Lauren Resnick to ask: “How should we make sense of these Tziporah Kasachkoff, Philosophy Department, CUNY many labels? Do critical thinking, metacognition, cognitive Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016 strategies and study skills refer to the same kind of capabilities? And how are they related to problem-solving abilities that Or to mathematicians, scientists and engineers try to teach their Eugene Kelly, Department of Social Science, New York students?” (1989, 1). Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, NY 11568. Following Resnick’s example, we go over some of the main categories that are frequently involved in the “call it what you will” course, making comments on each of them in the hopes of encouraging greater clarity about what one proposes to do ARTICLES in teaching them. Such introductory courses (and the texts that are created for them) often conflate “things” that need to be distinguished—like critical thinking and informal logic. 1 Furthermore, the objectives in these introductory courses Teaching the Dog’s Breakfast : Some Dangers involve positions on difficult concepts requiring theoretical and How to Deal with Them2 treatment that they do not receive there. So we comment on the following concepts: reasoning, logic, informal logic, critical Ralph H. Johnson thinking, problem solving, decision-making, argument(ation), Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and inference, and implication. Our glosses on these concepts and Rhetoric, University of Windsor their distinctions are no doubt themselves controversial and, of course, they fall short of thorough, carefully supported analyses.