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1. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Galen Barry

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The concept of determinism proves to be a persistent stumbling block to student comprehension of issues surrounding free will. Students tend to commit two main errors. First, they often confuse determinism with the related but importantly different idea of fatalism. Second, students often do not adequately understand that mental states, such as desires or beliefs, can function as deterministic causes. This paper outlines a straightforward in-class exercise modeled after John Horton Conway’s “Game of Life” computer simulation. The exercise aims to address the two main obstacles to understanding determinism and, as a result, improve student understanding of free will topics.
2. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Brian Bruya, Monika Ardelt

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Advances in both the science and theory of wisdom have made it possible to create sound wisdom curricula and test them in the classroom. This article is a report of one such attempt. We developed a curriculum consistent with theories of wisdom that espouse the following five methods: challenge beliefs; prompt the articulation of values; encourage self-development; encourage self-reflection; and groom the moral emotions—facilitated by the reading of narrative or didactic texts and fostering a community of inquiry. The texts used in class were the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Analects of Confucius, and the Dhammapada (along with some early Buddhist suttas). The requirements were reading the texts, writing reflection journals, active participation in class, and a personal philosophy of life summary. In this article, we explain each of these requirements, relate our particular methods to the more general methods, and speculate about how these methods may develop specific wisdom capacities.
3. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Laura Martena

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This paper discusses the widespread use of "trolley problems" in the ethics classroom from a critical perspective. After tracing the enormous popularity of ‘trolleyology’ in recent moral philosophy, differentiating various functions these hypotheticals are supposed to fulfill in ethical discourse and carving out the underlying conception of normative ethics as a quasi-scientific enterprise, I examine how they are constructed and how they affect their recipient. Against this background, I argue that despite their popularity, the use of trolley problems in the ethics classroom turns out to be questionable for a number of reasons, most of which have already been advanced in the philosophical debate but hardly been reflected upon in the didactic context. Finally, I argue that the deconstruction of trolleyesque scenarios would be a good educational use of them. When it comes to using cases for didactic purposes, I suggest we give trolley problems a rest and develop more realistic scenarios.
4. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Jake Wright

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Progressive stacking is a strategy for prioritizing in-class contributions that allows marginalized students to speak before non-marginalized students. I argue that this strategy is both pedagogically and ethically defensible. Pedagogically, it provides benefits to all students (e.g., expanded in-class discourse) while providing special benefits (e.g., increased self-efficacy) to marginalized students, helping to address historic educational inequalities. Ethically, I argue that neither marginalized nor non-marginalized students are wronged by such a policy. First, I present a strategy for self-disclosure that reduces the risk of inadvertent, unwanted disclosure while respecting marginalized student autonomy in a manner analogous to accommodations provided under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Second, I argue that non-marginalized students are not wronged because such students are not silenced during discussion and because non-marginalized students benefit from the prioritization of marginalized voices.

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5. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Alexander Bearden

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6. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Dara Fogel

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7. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4

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articles

8. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Karen Adkins

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This paper argues for the specific pedagogical and philosophical value of toggling between places, as experienced in service or community-based learning. Regular shifting of student perspectives by traveling from a classroom to a community service site alienates students from their assumptions about beliefs, and opens up more diverse perspectives within the classroom.
9. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Brian Bruya, Monika Ardelt

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This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single theory of how to foster wisdom in formal education. The fundamental methods of wisdom education are found to be: challenge beliefs; prompt the articulation of values; encourage self-development; encourage self-reflection; and groom the moral emotions. These five methods of wisdom pedagogy rest on two facilitating methods: read narrative or didactic texts and foster a community of inquiry. This article is companion to two further articles, one on a practical wisdom curriculum and the other on a study of wisdom growth in college students.
10. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Linda L. Farmer

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Parables are not frequently found in critical thinking textbooks. And, yet, because parables are relatively simple, engaging stories, they can present various principles of good reasoning and attitudes of a critical thinker in a way that is fun and accessible to the students in our classrooms. Using two well-known parables, W. K. Clifford’s Ship Owner and John Wisdom’s Invisible Gardener (as retold by Antony Flew), I outline how parables like these can be used in the teaching of critical thinking, and what the benefits of doing so are. I also argue that the religious context in which the parables were set is not a detriment to their pedagogical value but, rather, can be an added benefit.
11. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
W. John Koolage, Danielle Clevenger

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There has been a recent explosion of undergraduate philosophy conferences across the United States. In this paper, we explore undergraduate conferences along three lines. First, we argue that, as a well-designed learning activity, undergraduate conferences can serve to increase gender parity in philosophical spaces—a widely accepted and important goal for our discipline. Second, we argue that this increase in parity (and other beneficial learning outcomes) is due, at least in part, to the proper design of undergraduate conferences as High-Impact Practices. Our empirical work on our own undergraduate conference demonstrates that properly designing the conference as a High-Impact learning activity does, as expected, benefit underserved student populations, including women. Additionally, the study also revealed unexpected opportunities to intervene on student learning. Third, we argue, also in line with our data, that undergraduate conferences occupy a previously taxonomically unrecognized grouping (Culminating Events) among recognized High-Impact Practices.
12. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
David Kennedy

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This paper seeks to identify the role of play in the design and function of Socratic dialogue as practiced in community of philosophical inquiry (CPI) in classrooms. It reviews the ideas of some major play theorists from various fields of study and practice—philosophy, cultural anthropology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and education—and identifies the epistemological, ontological, and axiological judgments they share in their analyses of the phenomenon of play. It identifies five psychodynamic dimensions in which the Socratic play of “following the argument where it leads” can be identified: the “play space,” the “time of play,” “the rules of the game,” “the stakes in play,” and “play and power.” Finally, it suggest that there is a historical relationship between the reconstruction of Socratic dialogue in CPI and the cultural reconstruction of “child” in post-modern philosophy, with special attention to Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s notion of “becoming-child” as emblematic of an emergent “post-human” style of subjectivity.
13. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Mary Beth Willard

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I present a case study of the use of a table-top role-playing game in a mid-level course that presupposes no previous familiarity with philosophy. The course covered philosophical analyses of propaganda and language, and the pedagogical purpose of the game was to help students grasp the basics of philosophical and linguistic theories of assertion quickly. The game, Sign, directs players to create a signed language collaboratively, and thus forces them to pay attention to the subtle ways in which communication occurs.

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14. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Mark Causey

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15. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
James Elliott

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16. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Frank Fair

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17. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Ka Ya Lee

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18. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Adam Neikirk

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19. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
M. G. Piety

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20. Teaching Philosophy: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2
Victor Fabian Abundez-Guerra

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The question of how we should engage with a philosopher’s racial thought is of particular importance when considering Kant, who can be viewed as particularly representative of Enlightenment philosophy. In this article I argue that we should take a stance of deep acknowledgment when considering Kant’s work both inside and outside the classroom. Taking a stance of deep acknowledgment should be understood as 1) taking Kant’s racial thought to be reflective of his moral character, 2) Kant being accountable for his racial thought and 3) being willing to consider the possibility that Kant’s racial thought is consistent with and inextricable from his moral philosophy. Alternative forms of engaging with Kant’s racial work have either moral or pedagogical failings, which range from simply teaching the history of philosophy uncritically to outright deception. A stance of deep acknowledgement will allow philosophers to understand how Kant’s racial thought interacts with his moral philosophy and allow instructors to teach philosophy in a historically contextualized approach so as to not alienate students whose demographic was disparaged by Kant.